506 | THE INSECT WORLD. 
of the south of France. It is a Buprestis, of splendid colours, 
and of metallic brightness. Linneus, as we said above, gave to 
it, wrongly, the name of Buprestis, which among the ancients 
served to designate a very different insect, the Meloé, of the family 
of the Cantharide; but modern naturalists have allowed this 
illegitimate title. 
The Buprestide walk heavily, but fly with the greatest 
ease during the heat of the sun, and settle on the trunks 
of trees exposed to its rays. In Europe, and especially in the 
North, they are very rare, and of very small size. They must 
be looked for on birch trees, whose white colour seems to 
attract them. In the hottest parts of the world they are very 
abundant, of large dimensions, and adorned with sparkling 
colours. They do not jump, and are not endowed with the phos- 
phorescent property. Their larve have no legs, are lengthy, 
whitish, of a fleshy consistency, with the first ring of their bodies 
very much broadened. They live in the trunks of trees, between 
the bark and the wood, hollowing out for themselves irregular 
galleries, and remaining sometimes in this state for ten years before 
imetamorphosing. Laporte de Castelnau and Gory have described 
and made drawings of about thirteen hundred 
species of Buprestide. Fig. 553 represents the 
Buprestis imperialis. The Buprestis albosparsa, 
the genera Julodis, the Chrysochroas, and the 
Bachys belong also to the great family of Bu- 
prestide. The Clerit are connected with the 
preceding. They have the thorax narrower than 
the elytra, and rather long; their integu- 
ments are less solid than those of the ZLlate- 
ride and the Buprestide. The latter are 
(ak pee phytophagous, the former earnivorous. The 
principal type of this family is the Clerus for- 
micarius, russety, with the head and legs black, whose larva lives 
at the expense of the larve of the weevil. Another genus, the 
Necrobia, which lives on dried animal matter, has beeome cele- 
brated, as it was the cause of the salvation of the ereatest ento- 
mologist of France. The name of Necrobia (from vexpéc and Bude) 
does not mean ‘‘ which lives on dead bodies,’ but it means “life 



