Insects abroad : being a popular account of foreign insects, their structure, habits, and transformations . dnot among the Mutillas. A species of Dorylus will be describedpresently. The females are wingless, and are armed with insect seems to be so venomous in proportion to its size asthe female Mutilla ; and in the case of one of our own species,Mutilla Europoea, the sting is scarcely less to be dreaded thanthat of the hornet itself. One foreign species, Mutilla coccinea, of North America, is E E 418 INSECTS ABROAD. said to possess so venomous a sting that a person who was stungby o
Insects abroad : being a popular account of foreign insects, their structure, habits, and transformations . dnot among the Mutillas. A species of Dorylus will be describedpresently. The females are wingless, and are armed with insect seems to be so venomous in proportion to its size asthe female Mutilla ; and in the case of one of our own species,Mutilla Europoea, the sting is scarcely less to be dreaded thanthat of the hornet itself. One foreign species, Mutilla coccinea, of North America, is E E 418 INSECTS ABROAD. said to possess so venomous a sting that a person who was stungby one of these insects became insensible in a few minutes, andvery nearly lost his life. So unlike are the males and females of those insects, that (hetwo sexes have more than once been catalogued not only asdifferent species, but as belonging to different genera. The accompanying illustration represents a species from Bahia,bearing the specific name of eerbera, in allusion to the legendarydog which guarded the portals of Hades. As may be seen bythe figure, it bears a curious resemblance to our well-known. jV-t -- ^* 4 -v^* Fio. 209.—Mutilla eerbera.(Black and white.) hunting spider. Its colours are very simple, being only blackand white—the latter being of a peculiar dull, dead characterthat is very difficult to express. The insect looks indeed as ifit had been originally black, and that a pattern had been drawnon it with white paint It is thickly covered with hair, as isthe case with most of the Mutillas, though in this species thehair is not so long as in many others. The really fine insect called Mutilla occidentals belongs to North America. This is a very hairy species, and is most splendidly coloured THE BIG-HEADED MUTILLA. 419 with black and scarlet. In the male the head and a large patchupon the thorax are scarlet. The abdomen is black, but isadorned with a number of scarlet rings, of exactly the same hueas that upon the thorax. The wings are brown. The winglessfemale
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1880, booksubjectinsects, bookyear1883
