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Perhaps one of them will be found to give chase to the terrible enemy of my crops, the voracious White Worm, the grub of the Cockchafer; perhaps the Hemorrhoidal Scolia, rivalling in size the Garden Scolia and like her, no doubt, requiring a copious diet, will be entered in the insects' "Who's Who" as the destroyer of the Pine-chafer, that magnificent Beetle, flecked with white upon a black or brown ground, who of an evening, during the summer solstice, browses on the foliage of the fir-trees.
What then is the use of the enormous fan-like structure of the male antennæ? The seven-leaved apparatus is for the Pine-chafer what his long vibrating horns are to the Cerambyx and the panoply of the head to the Onthophagus and the forked antlers of the mandibles to the Stag-beetle. Each decks himself after his manner in these nuptial extravagances.
We have seen him coming up from underground, falling on the passers-by, seizing them at some distance from the burrow and dragging them forcibly into his cut-throat den. The Rose-chafer, the Common Cockchafer are but small deer for him. He dares to attack the Cicada, he dares to dig his hooks into the corpulent Pine-chafer. He is a fearless ruffian, ready for any crime.
To treat fevers divide the fuller beetle in two parts and apply half under the right arm and half under the left. Now what did the ancient naturalist mean by the term "fuller beetle"? We do not precisely know. The qualification albis guttis, white spots, would fit the Pine-chafer well enough, but it is not sufficient to make us certain.
Captivity has sorrows that are hard to overcome. This was all that I was able to see. Mating, it appears, must take place during the later hours of the night, so that I missed the propitious moment. One detail in particular interested me. The Pine-chafer emits a musical note. The female is as gifted as the male. Does the lover make use of his faculty as a means of seduction and appeal?
John, reminiscences of the festivals of the Sun, which the children light in the village streets, are not more punctual in their date. At this season, in the hours of twilight, the Pine-chafer comes every evening if the weather is fine, to visit the pine-trees in the garden. I follow its evolutions with my eyes.
Often some creature kept him company; some insect never seen before was often his greatest pleasure; such as the pine-chafer, which he encountered then for the first time; that superb beetle, whose black or chestnut coat is sprinkled with specks of white velvet; which squeaks when captured, emitting a slight complaining sound, like the vibration of a pane of glass rubbed with the tip of a moistened finger.
Common sense should be considered before the aberrations of nomenclature. Why not call our subject the Pine-chafer, in reference to the beloved tree, the paradise of the insect during the two or three weeks of its aerial life? Nothing could be simpler, or more appropriate, to give the better reason last.
To feast gluttonously on a Snail whom I myself have rendered defenseless by breaking her shell is nothing for a warrior to boast about; but we shall soon see the Carabus display his daring. I offer a Pine-chafer, in the pink of strength, to the Golden Beetle, whose appetite has been whetted by a few days' fasting. The victim is a colossus beside the Golden Carabus; an Ox facing a Wolf.
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