. British insects : a familiar description of the form, structure, habits, and transformations of insects. tanceof the aphis-eating Ladybird larva is too evident to bemissed ; but there are many larvae commonly consideredas mischievous, which, nevertheless, are workingassiduously in the interests of man. Thus, the fruit-eating, the root-eating, the tree-killing beetles, are alldoing their part towards checking the overcrowding, theovergrowth, and the consequent enfeeblement of thewhole vegetable world; and if sometimes a flight ofLocusts abroad, or an unusual multitude of Cock-chafers at home,
. British insects : a familiar description of the form, structure, habits, and transformations of insects. tanceof the aphis-eating Ladybird larva is too evident to bemissed ; but there are many larvae commonly consideredas mischievous, which, nevertheless, are workingassiduously in the interests of man. Thus, the fruit-eating, the root-eating, the tree-killing beetles, are alldoing their part towards checking the overcrowding, theovergrowth, and the consequent enfeeblement of thewhole vegetable world; and if sometimes a flight ofLocusts abroad, or an unusual multitude of Cock-chafers at home, effects a destruction which for thetime appears a simple evil, we should do well to re-member the Fire of London, and other unmitigated COLEOPTERA. 101 evils, which we have at length learned to view in their true light. Before leaving the order Coleoptera, an insect must bementioned which has much perplexed entomologists—namely, the Stylops. This insect, parasitic in its winglessstate in the bodies of bees and wasps, is in appearance,habits, transformations, so peculiar or so little uuder- Fig. Stylops Aterrima, Newport. stood, that naturalists have had much difficulty in placingit, and it has been moved from one order to Westwood has formed it into an order by itself—Strepsiptera; but it has more recently been replaced inColeoptera. The male Stylops is a singular looking insect, under aquarter of an inch in length, and sometimes very minute ;with a pair of enormous /iiwc^-wings, and no fore-wings,differing in this from the dipterous and all other insectspossessing only two wings (as , the exceptional wing-less beetles), these having the fore-wings developed whilethe hind-wings are wanting. That they are the hind andnot the fore-wings which are developed, is shown by theirposition on the thorax relatively to other parts, as the 102 INSECTS, converse appears in the Diptera. As also in the Dipterathe missing hind-^vings are represented by a pair ofhammer
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Keywords: ., bookauthorme, bookcentury1800, bookdecade1870, booksubjectinsects
