United States or Croatia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The plains were ornamented by the flowers of a pink wood-sorrel, wild peas, oenotherae, and geraniums; and the birds began to lay their eggs. Numerous Lamellicorn and Heteromerous insects, the latter remarkable for their deeply sculptured bodies, were slowly crawling about; while the lizard tribe, the constant inhabitants of a sandy soil, darted about in every direction.
Again, in three species of the Lamellicorn genus Oryctes, we have a nearly parallel case.
From the reasons assigned in the last chapter, it is probable that the great horns possessed by the males of many Lamellicorn, and some other beetles, have been acquired as ornaments. From the small size of insects, we are apt to undervalue their appearance. The colouring of insects is a complex and obscure subject.
Bates, H.W., on variation in the form of the head of Amazonian Indians; on the proportion of the sexes among Amazonian butterflies; on sexual differences in the wings of butterflies; on the field-cricket; on Pyrodes pulcherrimus; on the horns of Lamellicorn beetles; on the colours of Epicaliae, etc.; on the coloration of tropical butterflies; on the variability of Papilio Sesostris and Childrenae; on male and female butterflies inhabiting different stations; on mimicry; on the caterpillar of a Sphinx; on the vocal organs of the umbrella-bird; on the toucans; on Brackyurus calvus.
As for the Euchlora, she is not involved in the problem: the larva hunted by the Two-banded Scolia does not belong to her any more than it belongs to the Anoxia. Then with which Scarabaeid does the empty skin which is still unknown to me correspond? The Lamellicorn whom I am seeking must exist in the ground which I have been exploring, because the Two-banded Scolia has established herself there.
I examined this shred of skin with all the care that it deserved. My first suspicions were confirmed: a Lamellicorn, a Scarabaeid in the larval state, is the first food of the Wasp whose cocoon I have just unearthed. But which of the Scarabaeidae? And does this cocoon, my precious booty, really belong to the Scoliae? The problem is beginning to take shape.
With the Coleoptera, however, as before remarked, it is in the great Lamellicorn group, placed by some authors at the head of the Order, and in which we sometimes see a mutual attachment between the sexes, that we find the males of some species possessing weapons for sexual strife, others furnished with wonderful horns, many with stridulating organs, and others ornamented with splendid metallic tints.
Word Of The Day