Part 35

Animals do not contribute much towards limiting the number of cockchafers, although the latter are not wanting in natural enemies. Among insects, it is the large species of _Carabus_ which search after the larvæ as well as the adult cockchafers. The _Carabus auratus_ attacks them with great coolness. M. Blanchard saw a carabus seize a cockchafer in the middle of the road, open its belly with its mandibles, and devour its intestines. The cockchafer tossed about from one side to the other, and even walked, while it was undergoing its cruel punishment; and the _Carabus_ followed it without interrupting its work. Some reptiles, many carnivorous animals, such as the shrew-mouse, pole-cats, weasels, rats, and certain birds, especially the night-birds, prey upon the cockchafer and its larvæ. Ravens and magpies, which are seen going from clod to clod, make savage but insufficient war against them. In fact, all these animals together do not destroy the hundredth part of the cockchafers which are born every year.

As an example which will show the extent of the evil, a field of 29 acres was ploughed up into 72 furrows. At the first ploughing were gathered 300 larvæ per furrow; at the second, 250; at the third, 30 more; which amounted to 600 per furrow, and to 43,200 in all. Man, who is the victim of these ravages, has been necessarily obliged to think of a means of destroying this enemy. Many _infallible_ means have been proposed, which have, however, given no result. Prizes have been offered, but the evil has not diminished. Here are a few of the processes recommended.

Immediately after the ploughing, you must turn into the field infested by the larvæ a flock of turkeys, to whom it will be a great treat to devour them, or else you must sow in the field rape-seed, very thickly, which you must then bury by a very deep ploughing, when it is as high as your hand. Colewort, it is said, kills the larvæ, while it at the same time manures the soil. Or again, you must plough up the land on the approach of hard frosts, to expose the worms to the cold. Lastly, you can water the field with oil of coal, or sprinkle it with ashes of boxwood. All these are expensive. The simplest means are here the best. It is better to depend upon labour than destructive substances, whose employment always presents inconveniences. Considering the difficulties which oppose themselves to us in our search after larvæ, we had better collect them in their adult state by violently shaking the branches of the trees on which they doze during the day, and then kill them in some way or other, thus destroying from twenty to forty eggs with each female. A general cockchafer hunt, rendered obligatory by a law, and encouraged by prizes, would be the only efficacious means of opposing a pest which costs agriculture many millions. This means would also be less costly than the turning up of the land concealing the larvæ, when it is remembered that they prefer land in full bearing.

In 1835 the General Council of La Sarthe voted a sum of 20,000 francs for a cockchafer hunt. Nearly 600,000 litres were delivered in, thanks to a prize of three centimes per litre. As a litre contains about 500 cockchafers, there were thus destroyed about 300,000,000 of them. It is true that M. Romieu, then Prefect of La Sarthe, who was the principal promoter of this excellent measure, became food for the wit of the newspapers, and was represented dressed like a cockchafer in the _Charivari_. Derision and ridicule are too often the reward of useful ideas. In Switzerland were taken, in 1807, more than 150,000,000 of these insects. But these isolated measures were useless in producing a durable result.

It has been tried to make use of cockchafers in industrial arts. According to M. Farkas, they have succeeded, in Hungary, by boiling them in water, in extracting from them an oil, which is used to grease the wheels of carriages; and, according to M. Mulsant, the blackish liquid which is contained in the oesophagus may be used for painting. But the produce arising from these industrial occupations is not considerable enough to ensure them a certain extension, which is to be regretted, for agriculture would thus be rid of one of its most formidable scourges. Poultry are sometimes fed on these insects; pigs are also very fond of them.

The _Melolontha Hippocastani_ differs from the common species in having black legs. The _Melolontha fullo_, twice as large as the common species, is variegated with tawny and white. It is met with on the sea-coasts, and on the downs of the north and south of France, as its larvæ feed on the roots of maritime plants.

Among the genera very near to the cockchafer we will mention the little _Rhizotrogus_, light-coloured and hairy, which flies in the evening in the meadows, and the _Euchloras_, or _Anomalas_, of splendid metallic colours. The _Anomala vitis_ is an insect of about half an inch long, of a beautiful green, bordered by yellow, with the elytra deeply furrowed. It sometimes causes extensive ravages in the vineyards.

After the _Cetoniadæ_ and the Cockchafers, we come to the _Scarabæidæ_, properly so called. The _Oryctes nasicornis_ (Fig. 435) is very common all over Europe. It is about an inch long, of a chestnut-brown, and perfectly smooth. The male has on the head a horn, which is wanting in the female (Figs. 436, 437). Its larva, which is a great whitish worm, larger than that of the cockchafer, lives in rotten wood and in the tan which is employed in hot-houses and in garden-frames. They were to be found by hundreds in the old hot-houses of the Jardin des Plantes at Paris. The market-gardeners, who employ the tannin of the oak bark, have rendered this Coleopteron very common in the environs of that capital. Fig. 438 represents an exotic species, the _Xylotrupes dichotomus_.

Among the true _Scarabæi_ we meet with many species of gigantic size, especially in America. _Dynastes Hercules_, a great insect of a fine ebony black, with its elytra of an olive grey, is not rare in the Antilles. Its thorax is prolonged into a horn as long as its body, and bent round at the extremity; its head has also a long horn standing erect. The females want these appendages. Fig. 439 represents the _Golofa claviger_ of Guyana.

The _Geotrupes_ are insects almost as common as the chafers. As their name reminds us, they make holes in the ground, which they scoop out, particularly in meadows, under cow-dung which has grown dry on the surface. It is under the excrements of ruminating animals and horses that they must be looked for. They fly especially at night, and may be seen buzzing about on fine summer evenings in the vicinity of dung heaps.

The _Geotrupes stercorarius_, the Shard-born Beetle, Clock, or Dumbledor, is of a brilliant bluish black, and attains to a length of about two-thirds of an inch. We may consider this Coleopteron as a useful auxiliary of man in ridding the soil of excrementitious matter. The genus _Trox_, which belongs to the same group, generally inhabits sandy countries, and has its body nearly always covered with earth or dust; it lives on vegetable substances, or on animal matter in a state of decomposition. The habits of the genus _Copris_ resemble those of _Geotrupes_; they live in excrement. The form of their clypeus, broad, rounded, without teeth, and advancing over the mouth, suffices to distinguish the kindred species. In the environs of Paris and in England the _Copris lunaris_ is found. The larvæ of these insects form a cocoon composed of earth and dung, before transforming themselves into pupæ; this cocoon is more or less round, and acquires a great hardness.

The species of the genus _Ateuchus_ collect portions of excrement, which they make up into balls, and roll till they are as perfectly rounded as pills, and in which they lay their eggs. This habit has gained for these insects the name of pill-makers. Their hind legs seem to be particularly adapted for this operation, for they are very long and somewhat distant from the other legs, which gives to the _Ateuchi_ a strange appearance, and makes it hard work for them to walk. They walk backwards and often fall head over heels. They are generally seen on declivities exposed to the greatest heat of the sun, assembled together to the number of four or five, occupied in rolling the same ball; so that it is impossible to know which is the real proprietor of this rolling object. They seem not to know themselves; for they roll indifferently the first ball which they meet with, or near which they are placed.

The _Ateuchi_ are large flat insects, with a broad-toothed clypeus; they all belong to the Ancient Continent. The type of the genus is the _Ateuchus sacer_ (Fig. 442), the Sacred Scarabæus of the Egyptians. This insect is black, and attains to a length of a little less than an inch. It is to be found commonly enough in the south of France, in the whole of southern Europe, Barbary, and Egypt. The paintings and amulets of the ancient Egyptians very often represent it, and sometimes give it a gigantic size. It is, doubtless, then, this species which was an object of veneration with the Egyptians.

There exists another species, which is always represented as of a magnificent golden green, and to which Herodotus also attributes this colour. As it was not to be found in Egypt, it was thought for a long while that the Egyptians had painted the black species of a more splendid colour in order to pay it homage. But in 1819 M. Caillaud actually found at Meroe, on the banks of the White Nile, the _Ateuchus Ægyptiorum_, which resembles the _Ateuchus sacer_ much in colour, but has a golden tint. Since then it has also been brought from Sennaar. The two species were both probably sacred. Hor-Apollon, the learned commentator on Egyptian hieroglyphics, thinks that this people, in adopting the scarabæus as a religious symbol, wished to represent at once, _a unique birth_--_a father_--_the world_--_a man_. The _unique birth_ means that the scarabæus has no mother. A male wishing to procreate, said the Egyptians, takes the dung of an ox, works it up into a ball, and gives it the shape of the world, rolls it with its hind legs from east to west, and places it in the ground, where it remains twenty-eight days; the twenty-ninth day it throws its ball, now open, into the water, and there comes forth a male scarabæus. This explanation shows also why the scarabæus was employed to represent at the same time a _father_, _a man_, and _the world_. There were, however, according to the same author, three sorts of _Scarabæi_: one was in the shape of a cat, and threw out brightly shining rays (probably the Golden Scarabæus, _Ateuchus Ægyptiorum_); the two others had horns; their description seems to refer to a _Copris_ and a _Geotrupes_.

As other remarkable species of _Scarabæi_ we represent the _Scarabæus enema_ (Fig. 441), with strong horns, the _Megacerus chorinæus_ (Fig. 443), the _Megalosoma anubis_ (Figs. 444 and 445), and the _Dynastes Hercules_ (Fig. 446).

The last family of the _Scarabæidæ_ contains the _Lucanidæ_, or Stag Beetles. These Coleoptera are of great size, and their head is armed with enormous robust mandibles, which give them a ferocious air, which their inoffensive habits do not in any way justify. They live in half-rotten trees, the destruction of which they accelerate. Their mandibles, of such prodigious size only in the male, are of more inconvenience to them than they are of use, as they impede their flight. Their strength enables them to raise considerable weights, but they make no other use of them than to show their strength, which is enormous. They do not attack other insects, and live only on vegetable juices.

The common Stag Beetle (Figs. 447[121] and 448) attains to a length of two inches, or more, including its mandibles, and is of a dark brown chestnut colour. They are met with during the months of May, June, and July, in large forests, climbing along trees and hooking themselves on to the trunks by their mandibles. Charles De Geer says that the Stag Beetle imbibes the honeyed liquid which is found on oak trees, a tree it particularly seeks after, which has caused it to be called in Swedish _Ek-Oxe_ (Oak ox). It is supposed that it eats the leaves also. It sometimes attacks insects. Westwood says that it has been seen to descend from a tree carrying a caterpillar in its mandibles. Swammerdam had one which followed him like a dog when he offered it honey. They only fly in the evening, holding themselves nearly straight, so as not to see-saw. Their larvæ--which are whitish, with russety heads, live in the interior of trees, their existence in that state lasting nearly four years. Many naturalists think that the larva of the _Lucanus_ was the _Cossus_ of the Romans, which figured on the tables of the rich patricians, and particularly of Lucullus.

[121] The figure may possibly mislead, as it shows the larva and pupa in the ground, for although recent observations show that this species does occasionally undergo its metamorphoses therein, it is not probable that the larva lives anywhere but in wood.--ED.

Fig. 448 represents the Stag Beetle (_Lucanus cervus_); Fig. 449, an exotic species, the _Lucanus (Homoderus) Mellyi_, from the Gabon; Fig. 450 the _Lucanus bellicosus_; and Fig. 451 another exotic species from Celebes, _Dorcus Titan_.

The _Syndesus cornutus_ (Fig. 452) of Tasmania, and the _Chiasognathus Grantii_, from the coast of Chili (Fig. 453), of a beautiful golden green, shot with copper, belong to genera akin to _Lucanus_.

We arrive now at the tribe of _Silphales_, which are still more useful to man than the Dung Beetles (_Scarabæidæ_), since many of them disencumber the soil of the carcases of animals in a state of putrefaction. The most remarkable insects of this tribe are the _Histers_, the _Silphas_, properly so called, and the _Necrophora_.

The _Histers_ are small insects, to be recognised by their body being almost round, smooth, and shining, with the elytra marked with striæ, and their mandibles pretty well developed. They attain to a length of about a fifth of an inch. The _Silphæ_, thus named on account of their broad and rounded form, are of a large size (about half to three-quarters of an inch), of a dark colour, and exhale a sickly odour. When seized, they disgorge a blackish liquid. They introduce themselves under the skin of the carcases of animals, and devour their flesh to the very bone. The larvæ, flat and serrated, live like the adults, in carrion. The commonest species is the _Silpha obscura_, of an intense black, delicately dotted. Two species found in England and in the environs of Paris, _Silpha quadripunctata_ and the _Silpha thoracica_, climb trees and attack caterpillars. It appears to be certain that the larva of the _Silpha obscura_ does a great deal of damage to beet-root, whose leaves it devours. The _Necrodes_ come very near to the _Silphæ_. They are distinguished from them by having the hind legs larger. Only one, _Necrodes littoralis_, occurs in England. Fig. 459 represents the _Necrodes lacrymosa_, from Australia. The _Necrophori_, or Grave-diggers, are honest undertakers, who carefully bury carcases left on the soil. As soon as they smell a field-mouse, a mole, or a fish in a state of decomposition, they come by troops to bury it, getting under the carcase, hollowing out the ground with their legs, and projecting the rubbish they dig out in all directions. Little by little the carcase sinks; at the end of twenty-four hours it has generally disappeared into a hole five inches in depth, but the _Necrophori_ sink it still lower--as far as from seven to ten inches below the surface. They then mount it, cast the earth down into the grave so as to fill it, and the females lay their eggs in the tomb, where the larvæ will find an abundance of food. When the ground is too hard to be dug, the _Necrophori_ push the carcase further, till they find permeable soil. A mole has been run through with a stick, or else tied by a string, to see how the _Necrophori_ would get over the difficulty. They scooped out the soil underneath the stick, and cut through the string, and the mole was buried in spite of the obstacles. Fig. 460 represents a troop of _Necrophori_ burying a small rat.

The _Necrophorus vespillo_ (Fig. 461) is variegated with yellow and black; the _Necrophorus Germanicus_ (Fig. 462) is larger, quite black, and rarer. All these insects exhale a disagreeable musky smell. Their bodies are often covered with parasites, which are carried along by them by hooking on to their hairs, and which make use of the _Necrophorus_ as a vehicle in which they get their food.

The _Staphylinidæ_ live in the carcases of animals, on manure, in detritus, and attack living insects. They are, for the most part, of small size, and are distinguished by their elytra, which are short, and resemble a waistcoat or a jacket; but their wings are fully developed. The large species have strong mandibles. When irritated, the _Staphylini_ disgorge an acrid black liquid; and by the abdomen they emit a volatile fluid having a musky odour.

We see frequently on roads the _Staphylinus olens_ (Figs. 463 and 464), which, when it finds itself attacked, raises its abdomen, and thrusts out two little whitish bladders, which pour out a volatile liquid. Its larva lives under stones, and its habits are the same as those of the adult insect. It is very carnivorous, and very active, and often attacks those of its own kind. The _Staphylinus hirtus_ (Fig. 466) resembles at a distance a humble-bee, on account of its long yellow hairs. The _Staphylinus maxillosus_ (Fig. 465) has black and white hairs. The genera _Pselaphus_ and _Claviger_, akin to the above, contain little insects which live as parasites in the nests of ants. The _Pselaphus Heisii_ (Fig. 467), less than a line long, lives on the _débris_ of reeds, on the borders of marshes.

The _Claviger foveolatus_ (Fig. 468) is met with in the nest of a little yellow ant, which takes as much care of it as of its own progeny, because the _Claviger_ secretes a liquid very much appreciated by ants, who are continually occupied in licking its back.

The _Dermestidæ_ attack by preference the tendons and the skins of carcases. A few of the insects of this family are the plague of our collections and the furriers. They devour a quantity of dry substances--skins, feathers, catgut, hair, objects made of tortoise-shell, the dried bodies of insects, &c. Some other _Dermestidæ_ feed on animal matter still fresh: such is the Bacon Beetle, _Dermestes lardarius_ (Fig. 469), which is to be met with in some dirty pork-shops. It is black, with the base of its elytra tawny and marked with three black spots. The larvæ are covered with a russety hair; they eat bacon, skins, and also attack each other. The perfect insect does no damage. Like all the _Dermestidæ_, it counterfeits death when handled. The _Dermestes vulpinus_, of a tawny grey, injures furs; and the Hudson's Bay Company, whose storehouses in London were infested by this insect, offered a reward of £20,000 for a means of destroying this insect. The furriers have also cause to dread the _Attagenus pellio_ (Fig. 470), whose larva, covered with yellowish hairs, has at its extremity a sort of broom, which assists it in moving.

The _Anthrenus museorum_, the fifteenth of an inch in length, black, with three grey bands, drives collectors to despair, for its larva destroys their collections. It is covered with grey and brownish hairs, which it bristles up the moment it is touched. The perfect insect feeds on flowers, and counterfeits death when seized. All possible means have been tried for getting rid of the _Anthrenus_ by placing in the collection camphor, benzine, tobacco, sulphur, &c., but benzine very soon destroys them.