INSECT SIPPERS AND GNA WERS. 251 
hundreds are destroyed by birds and by other insects, 
while the pitiless wind and soaking rain of our English 
summers often batter their tender wings before they 
can creep under shelter. In this respect they are far 
worse off than our next group, the Beetles, which are 
gnawing insects during both the active seasons of their 
life, and whose front wings are not used in flying, but 
form those beautiful sheaths called elytra,"' which so 
often make these insects look like brilliant jewels. 
These elytra in many beetles are very hard and 
strong, and serve to cover up safely the pair of large 
transparent hind wings which are used in flying. 
There can scarcely be any doubt that the beetles 
are especially well provided with weapons for fighting 
the battle of life, for they have not only managed to 
spread into every country on the globe, but are by 
far the most numerous of all insects. From the huge 
Goliath beetle of Africa, five inches long, down to the 
minute rove -beetles which give such sharp pricks 
when they fly into our eyes on summer evenings, 
beetles are of all sizes, and live in almost all con- 
ceivable ways. While many feed on plants, others 
are fierce hunters and even cannibals, devouring 
each other in the most cruel manner, while a very 
large number feed on dead and decaying matter and 
are most useful scavengers, and not a few feed on 
animals when young, and plants after they awake 
from their long sleep. For beetles, like butterflies, 
have three lives first as grubs or maggots ; secondly 
as helpless pupae or swaddled insects ; and it is only 
when they come to the third stage that they are true 
beetles, with wings and the power of laying eggs. 
* For this reason they are called sheath-winged insects, or Coleoptera 
(koleos sheath, pteron wing). 
