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Updated: April 30, 2025
For reasons of economy and easy acquisition, its disgusting method, but with very elegant modifications, suits the clan of the Clythræ and Cryptocephali, those pretty and magnificently coloured Beetles. Their larva, a naked little grub, makes itself a long, narrow pot, in which it lives just like the Snail in his shell.
The same thing must happen outside my cages: the eggs of the Clythræ and the Cryptocephali are scattered over the ground beneath the tree or plant on which the adult feeds. Now what do we find under the shelter of the oak?
I imagine that the lid-like appendage remains lowered, closing the mouth, until the moment when the egg sees the light. Then and not till then does it rise. Guided by the rather less complex structure of the eggs of the other Clythræ and of the Cryptocephali, I think of trying to take the strange germ to pieces; and I succeed after a fashion.
I feel sure that it does not bristle in this fashion when it descends the delicate natal sheath; it is near the end of the oviduct that it receives its coat of scales. In the case of the three Cryptocephali reared in my cages, the eggs are laid later; their season is the end of June and July.
As for the thing so prettily wrought by the Long-legged Clythra and the Cryptocephali, let us admit without false shame that it is made of fæcal matter. The proof is furnished by certain specimens, by no means rare in the Golden Cryptocephalus, in which the customary brown is replaced by an unmistakable green, the sign of a vegetable pulp.
The same may be said of the different Cryptocephali, who all have stumpy limbs. Wherever we look, we find special resources, known to some and unknown to others. Let us leave the long-armed and short-armed to pursue their amorous contests as they please and come to the egg, the main object of my insect-rearing.
Let us rear the insect, collect its eggs; then the pottery will tell us the secret of its beginnings. I install three species of Clythræ under wire-gauze covers, each with a bed of sand and a bottle of water containing a few young ilex-shoots, which I renew as and when they fade. I set up a second menagerie with some Cryptocephali, who are closely related to the Clythræ.
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