268 
Beetles 
light, as ornaments, by keeping them alive in little lace pockets on .their 
gowns or attached to delicate golden chains. Two large eye-like spots on 
the prothorax, and the under side of the hinder part of the abdomen, are 
the luminous regions. 
The larvae (Fig. 368) are elongate, slender, horny-skinned, brownish 
or yellowish white, living in the ground or in decaying wood, and popularly 
and aptly known as wireworms. They have three pairs of short legs, and 
a stumpy process on the last segment of the body. They feed on the seeds, 
roots, and other underground parts of plants and do much damage to various 
crops. Often whole fields of grain are ruined by the attack of wireworms 
on the planted seeds; meadows often suffer severely, and strawberries lose 
their stolons. The beetles fly about 
in early summer, depositing their 
eggs in the ground in grassy, weedy, 
or plowed land. The larvae soon 
hatch, dig down into the soil, and feed 
on roots and seeds for two or three 
years, when they become full-grown. 
They pupate in the ground in early 
fall and the pupae transform to adults 
before winter, but the beetles do not 
issue from the ground until the fol¬ 
lowing spring. 
Among our largest click-beetles 
is the eyed elater, Alaus oculatus 
(Fig. 369), if inch long, blackish 
with large uneven whitish gray dots, 
a pepper-and-salt fellow, Comstock 
well calls him, with a pair of large 
white-rimmed velvet-black eye-spots 
on the prothorax. The large larvae, about 2 inches long, live in decaying 
wood and are often found in the trunks of old apple-trees. Elater rubricollis, 
1 inch long, is black with light-red prothorax; E. sanguinipennis , 
inch long, is black with light-red elytra; E. nigricollis , f inch long, is 
black with whitish elytra. Athoiis scapularis , f inch long, is green sh 
black with the base of the elytra and the hind points of the prothorax clay- 
yellow. Several species of Corymbetes have the elytra brownish yellow with 
transverse zigzag black bands; C. hieroglyphicus , j inch long, has two 
bands; C.hamatus, rather smaller, has one band near the tip. Melanactes 
piceuSj 1 inch long, is glossy black and its large larva is luminous, 
strong green light being emitted from a narrow transverse region with 
expanded ends on each segment. 
Fig. 368. Fig. 369. 
F IG . 368.—Larva of a click-beetle, Elater 
acerrimus. (After Schiodte; natural 
size.) 
Fig. 369.—An eyed elater, Alaus oculatus. 
(One and one-half times natural size.) 
