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Updated: June 2, 2025
The most numerous and most interesting groups of beetles were the Longicorns and Rhynchophora, both pre-eminently wood-feeders. The former, characterised by their graceful forms and long antenna, were especially numerous, amounting to nearly three hundred species, nine-tenths of which were entirely new, and many of them remarkable for their large size, strange forms, and beautiful colouring.
There were forty-four species of Longicorns among them, and on the last day I took twenty-eight species of Longicorns, of which five were new to me. My boys were less fortunate in shooting. A few of the pretty racquet-tailed kingfishers were also obtained, but in very poor plumage.
Thus each species displays special methods, tricks of the trade which cannot be explained merely by reference to its tools. As these minute details have consequences of some importance, I do not hesitate to multiply them: they all help to throw light upon the subject which we are investigating. Let us once more see what the Longicorns are able to tell us.
The first hangs the walls of its chamber with velvet, the second knows nothing of this luxury. Though the work is almost the same in its results, it is at least carried out by contrary methods. The tool, therefore, does not govern the trade. This is what the two Cerambyx-beetles tell us. Let us vary the testimony of the Longicorns.
In Coleoptera I made large collections, but the extensive families of the Elateridae, Lamellicorns, and others are still uncatalogued, and very many species remain to be described. The only beetles that have been catalogued as yet with sufficient completeness to warrant any general conclusions are the Longicorns. I collected about 300 different species, and Mr.
Here I soon made myself comfortable, and set to work hunting for insects among the more recently felled timber, which swarmed with fine Curculionidae, Longicorns, and Buprestidae, most of them remarkable for their elegant forms or brilliant colours, and almost all entirely new to me.
Lastly, Westring states that in Omaloplia brunnea the rasp is placed on the pro-sternum, and the scraper on the meta-sternum, the parts thus occupying the under surface of the body, instead of the upper surface as in the Longicorns. We thus see that in the different coleopterous families the stridulating organs are wonderfully diversified in position, but not much in structure.
I will specify the few other cases in which I have heard of a difference in colour between the sexes of beetles. These two latter beetles belong to the family of Longicorns. Messrs. R. Trimen and Waterhouse, jun., inform me of two Lamellicorns, viz., a Peritrichia and Trichius, the male of the latter being more obscurely coloured than the female.
Instructed by the Sirex, the Buprestes, the Longicorns, I am once again compelled to make the same suggestion. It is not that I care for the expression: the unknown cannot be named in any language. It means that the hermits in the dark know how to find the light by the shortest road; it is the confessions of an ignorance which no honest observer will blush to share.
I think all classes of beetles had suffered. Many fine lamellicorns, that were generally numerous, were not seen at all; neither were many species of longicorns, usually common. Butterflies were also scarce, but it was the second season that they had been so. Some ants were affected; in others, such as the leaf-cutter, I noted no perceptible diminution in number.
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