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Are the wing-sheaths and the triangular winglets of the larva the moulds whose folds, wrinkles, and sinuosities form their contents in their own image, and so weave the network of the future wings and wing-covers? Were they really moulds we might for a moment be satisfied. We might tell ourselves: It is quite a simple matter that the thing moulded should conform to the cavity of the mould.
A small head, a fine snout, a costume of ashen grey sprinkled with brown, flattened wing-covers, a dumpy, compact body, with two large black dots on the rear segment such is the summary portrait of my visitor. The middle of May approaches, and with it the van of the invasion. They settle on the flowers, which are not unlike white-winged butterflies.
It is grey, irregularly striped, with ochre, and the wing-covers end in a sharp point. It bores in the trunks, and the beetle flies by night in August and September. It is much smaller than any of the foregoing species, being nine-twentieths of an inch in length. Its habits are not known. The beautiful yellow banded beetles are very abundant on the flowers of the golden rod in September. By Prof.
There still remain to be mentioned a Chrysomela, like the pyritosa, and a Coccinella with five very large spots upon both wing-covers, found on the line of perpetual snow on the volcano.
The beetle lies in wait for its prey in shallow pits excavated in pastures. It is remarkable for discharging with quite an explosion from the end of its body a pungent fluid, probably as a protection against its enemies. The former is black, while the latter is a pretty insect, greenish, with purplish-red wing-covers, and black legs. J. H. Emerton under a stone early in spring. Dr.
On the view of each organic being and each separate organ having been specially created, how utterly inexplicable it is that parts, like the teeth in the embryonic calf or like the shrivelled wings under the soldered wing-covers of some beetles, should thus so frequently bear the plain stamp of inutility!
But a hooked seed might be carried to an island by other means; and the plant then becoming modified would form an endemic species, still retaining its hooks, which would form a useless appendage, like the shrivelled wings under the soldered wing-covers of many insular beetles.
To obtain this result the insect rears herself upon her hind legs, supporting herself upon the tripod formed by the end of the wing-covers and the posterior tarsi. It would be hard to imagine anything more curious than this little carpenter, as she stands upright and brings her nasal bradawl down towards her body. Now the drill is held plumb against the surface, and the boring commences.
Nowhere else could you see such a mob of insects. It is a delirious mixture of backs and bellies, wing-covers and legs, which swarms and rolls upon itself, rising and falling, seething and boiling, shaken by continual convulsions, clicking and squeaking with a sound of entangled articulations. It is a bacchanal, a general access of delirium tremens. A few, but only a few, emerge from the mass.
The left or lower wing-cover is of similar structure, with the difference that the bow, the callosity, and the nervures occupy the upper face. It will be found that the two bows that is, the toothed or indented nervures cross one another obliquely. When the note has its full volume, the wing-covers are well raised above the body like a wide gauzy sail, only touching along the internal edges.
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