THE SAVAGE WORLD. 
247 
the fourth year prepares for its transformation. Returning yet further under¬ 
ground, it builds itself a roomy dwelling, and passes three months in accom¬ 
plishing its change to a winged insect. In May they burst upon the vege¬ 
table world, and frequently blunder into houses, and annoy, rather than injure, 
the in-dwellers. The bug should be killed upon its first appearance, before it 
has had the opportunity to lay its eggs, for the great damage done by this 
insect takes place during its underground, larval existence. 
The common may-bug sometimes swarms so as to obscure the sunlight 
and obstruct the road-way. But however uncomfortable this inconvenience may 
be, it is transient, whereas the devastation committed in the larval stage is 
beyond estimate. So serious has been their depredations in France that 
legislative action has been required ; in a single department there were collected, 
in the space of a fortnight, thirty-two 
carloads of these insects, which had 
already destroyed one-fourth of the crop. 
The Spanish Fly ( Lytta vesicatoria ) 
is three-quarters of an inch in length, 
bronze-green in color, common in Europe 
and Asia, and feeds mainly upon the 
ash. Under the name of cantharides, it 
is an article of commerce and a medicinal 
remedy. The earliest larval form ( triun - 
gulin) changes to a small, six-footed white 
grub, whose sharp mandibles are short¬ 
ened and blunted. At the end of five 
days this grub moults, and again a sec¬ 
ond time at the end of another five days, 
when its eyes disappear. It now de¬ 
scends into the ground, and after five 
days changes to a yellowish-white, after 
which it hibernates, until with the open¬ 
ing of spring a third larval form is produced. In about two weeks it assumes 
the form of a beetle, and in twenty days reaches maturity. 
Garden Hair Beetle (Bibio hortulanus ) is black when male, and rusty- 
red when female. 
The Flour-Bug, also called the Meal Beetle ( Tenebrio molitor ), is found 
about flour-mills, granaries, and bakeries. 
The Mourning-Bug (. Blaps mortisaga ) lives in cellars and dark places. 
It is the darkest colored of the beetles, and its sombre appearance has given 
it its popular name. 
St. John’s-Bug (Lampyris splendidula ) is a glow-worm—gray-brown in 
the male, and golden white in the female. Its lighting apparatus is in the 
body, but the source of supply or the real nature of the phosphorescence is 
still unknown. The pleasures of childhood would be greatly curtailed by the 
absence of these little star-twinklers, and their beauty and attractiveness are 
not neutralized by any harmful propensities. 
Cucuja, or Phosphorescent Beetle ( Cucuja sanguinolentus) , is so luminous 
that a single one furnishes light enough for the reading of print, and eight 
of them imprisoned in a vial will enable one to read script. The illuminating 
weaver BEETLE ( Lamia textor) and fire-fly, 
male, female and nymph ( Lampyris noc- 
tiluca). 
