■THE LIVING WORLD. 
251 
The Tiger Beetle is quite common and is strikingly beautiful. Its cover¬ 
ing is an armor studded with gems and embossed with gold, and no chain- 
mail ever adapted itself more readily and more perfectly to the graceful and rapidly 
changing attitudes of its wearer. To the unassisted eye it may appear to be 
but a dull green, but subjected to the magnifying power of a microscope it dis¬ 
plays the most marvellous beauty of coloring and of mechanism. It is to be 
found throughout Asia, Europe and America. 
The Brachmus crepitans is noteworthy because upon being touched it 
discharges, with a sensible explosion, a pungent vapor, which has all the 
effect of a mordant acid. The beetle , which makes its home in the 
Mammoth Cave of Kentucky, is blind—an evident adaptation to the con¬ 
ditions of its existence. The flattening of the hind legs into propelling oars 
of the water-beetle , and its ability to store away air in receptacles under 
the elytra, are yet other illustrations of the same intelligent Providence. 
The common whirligigs of our ponds and streams worship the sun with a con¬ 
stancy and intensity, so far surpassing the fabled statue of Memnon or the 
mythology of the sun¬ 
flower, as to bring them 
into comparison with 
the human sun-wor¬ 
shippers of the Orient. 
The devil's coach-horse, 
or rove-beetle , is fierce 
out of proportion to its 
size, and can, like the 
pole-cat, render itself 
unexpectedly and ef¬ 
fectively offensive. 
The “ shard-borne bee¬ 
tle,” of Gray’s “ Elegy 
in a Country Church¬ 
yard,” is so described 
because of the promi¬ 
nence of its elytra. The 
bronze beetle is a strikingly handsome species. There is an Indian beetle 
whose thorax is a burnished blue, relieved on the sides by copper-colored inden¬ 
tations ; its elytra are cream-colored, and have patches of purple at the tip and 
on both sides. The cardinal beetle is flame-colored, and illustrates the inimit¬ 
able richness of natural dyes. 
Lina Populi, or Linden Beetle, is black, green or blue; its wings are 
red with black borders. 
The Seven-dotted Lady-Bug is hemispherical, hairless, and the largest 
and most common European species. It is called in Europe, the lady-bird, 
and in America, the lady-bug. It has a black and white head and reddish 
elytra. The species of this country is very small, with red elytra dotted with black. 
Hercules Bug (. Dynasta Herculi ) is found in tropical America; it is six 
inches long, black, the elytra blue-green, with black spots.. 
Flesh-eating Coleoptera embrace many of the families named cicellides, 
car abides, dytiscides , and coccine Hides. 
