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You see, sir, and he went on with elytra and antennae and tarsi and metatarsi and tracheae and stomata and wing-muscles and leg-muscles and ganglions, all plain enough, I do not doubt, to those accustomed to handling dor-bugs and squash-bugs and such undesirable objects of affection to all but naturalists.
Now the great locust has only to harden its tissues a little longer and to tan the grey of its costume in the ecstasy of the sunshine. Let us leave it to its happiness, and return to an earlier moment. The four stumps which emerge from their coverings shortly after the rupture of the corselet along its median line contain, as we have seen, the wings and elytra with their innumerable nervures.
This and other species of Calopteron are not only imitated in their colour and markings by other families of beetles, but also in this peculiar widening of the elytra. Professor Westwood has also pointed out to me that the resemblance to the beetle is still further increased in the moth by raised lines of scales running lengthwise down the thorax.
Very similar to beetles are some of the water-bugs. They may, however, easily be distinguished from beetles, as the outer or anterior wings of the bugs cross each other at their lower ends, while the elytra of beetles, which much resemble the horny, anterior wings of some of the water-bugs, meet exactly in the middle line.
On her triumphal robe, seamed with pearls, flowered with silver and laminated with gold, the breastplate of jewels, each link of which is a precious stone, flashes serpents of fire against the pallid flesh, delicate as a tea-rose: its jewels like splendid insects with dazzling elytra, veined with carmine, dotted with yellow gold, diapered with blue steel, speckled with peacock green.
The last ascent I made to the summit of Pena Blanca was in the middle of June 1872, after we had had about two weeks of continuously wet weather. On the 17th, the rain clouds cleared away, the sun shone out, and only a few fleecy cumuli sailed across the blue sky, driven by the north-east trade wind. I had on previous visits to the peak noticed the elytra of many beetles lying on the bare top.
This case presents no difficulty on my view, for a hooked seed might be transported to an island by some other means; and the plant then becoming slightly modified, but still retaining its hooked seeds, would form an endemic species, having as useless an appendage as any rudimentary organ, for instance, as the shrivelled wings under the soldered elytra of many insular beetles.
Lustrous beetles, with their golden elytra, bask on the leaves, whilst minuter species dash through the air in circles, which the ear can follow by the booming of their tiny wings.
Some species stridulate very loudly, so that when Mr. F. Smith caught a Trox sabulosus, a gamekeeper, who stood by, thought he had caught a mouse; but I failed to discover the proper organs in this beetle. I am indebted to Mr. In Oryctes it is seated on the pro-pygidium; and, according to the same entomologist, in some other Dynastini, on the under surface of the elytra.
It pulls at first as much as it can, but seeing the failure of its efforts it does not persevere in this attempt, and comes out to survey the situation. Decidedly the victim is too large and cannot pass through. The Chlorion begins by cutting off the elytra, which maintain it rigid and prevent it from being compressed. This done, it harnesses itself anew and re-commences its efforts.
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