296 
COLEOPTERA. 
bamboos. The beetles are found in a variety of situations; many come 
to fallen fruits or to damaged fruits or plants to obtain the sap. 
Others are found in flowers, 
particularly cotton flowers, in 
injured bolls, in the bores of 
insects, at cut canes, in almost 
any situation where they can 
obtain the sap of plants. Others 
are found at decaying animal 
matter, or in hiding at the roots 
of plants, under leaves, etc. They 
have also been found breeding in the decaying-fibres of the fruits of 
a palmyra palm and are common among decaying vegetable matter 
breeding freely in decaying mangoes, for instance. Others are found 
killed by the sticky leaves of the tobacco plant. 
Murray summarises the habits of the group as follows :— 
“ The chief function of this family is that of scavengers. Their 
main business is to clear off decaying substances from the face of the 
earth, especially those minute and neglected portions which have es¬ 
caped the attention of other scavengers whose operations are conducted 
on a larger scale. We may characterize them in one point of view as 
retail scavengers. They are so to speak, users-up of waste 
materials. After the beast of prey has satisfied his hunger on the 
animal he has slain, after the hyana and the vulture have gorged them¬ 
selves on its carrion, after the fly with its army of maggots has consumed 
the soft parts, after the burying beetles and the Silphidse have borne 
their part in the clearing away and when nought but the bones remain, 
then come the Nitidularice to go over what they have left, to gnaw off 
every fragment of ligament or tendon and to leave the bones as nearly 
in the state of phosphate of lime as external treatment can. In another 
point of view, however, their employment is wholesale and wide enough. 
They conduct their operations all over the world, their branches extend 
into the most remote district; the materials with which they have to 
do, although mere waste, have no other limit to their variety or their 
number than the organized substances found on the surface of the globe. 
As in all great establishments, too, the principle of division of labour 
is carried to a great extent. Each different kind of substance has a 
Fig. 174.— Carpophilus hemipterus, 
LARVA, X 32. 
