Beetle

“ Does a beetle spend most of its life on the wing, like bees and flies? How might the body covering and the structure of the outer wings affect or determine the beetle's habits, even against its will? Are the feelers or are the eyes of your specimen more easily distinguished? Upon which of the special senses does it seem to place most dependence? Is your kind of beetle good for anything, either in nature or in human affairs? Make a statement regarding what good or what harm it may do. THE DAMSEL FLY LARVA Materials. ”

“ The curious thing was that, on it, produced apparently by some process of photogravure, was an illustration of a species of beetle with which I felt that I ought to be acquainted, and yet was not. It was of a dull golden green; the colour was so well brought out,—even to the extent of seeming to scintillate, and the whole thing was so dexterously done that the creature seemed alive. ”

“ To complete the cycle of the year in the adult form, to see one’s self surrounded by one’s sons at the spring festival, to double and treble one’s family: that surely is a most exceptional privilege in the insect world. The Bees, the aristocracy of instinct, perish once the honey-pot is filled; the Butterflies, the aristocracy not of instinct but of dress, die when they have fastened their packet of eggs in a propitious spot; the richly-armoured Ground-beetles succumb when the germs of a posterity are scattered beneath the stones. ”

“ It is a pretty, harmless beetle that gardeners like to see around their plants. Children repeat the rhyme when they find the beetle in the house and always release it to “fly away and save its children.” ”

“ The adjective “beetle-browed,” and similarly “beetling” (of a cliff) , are derived from the name of the insect. From another word (O. Eng. betel, connected with “beat”) comes “beetle” in the sense of a mallet, and the “beetling-machine,” which subjects fabrics to a hammering process. ”

“ Beetle lays her eggs in safe places.
The legs and feet of the beetle are made in joints. They have hairs on them. The legs are so made and set that they cannot spread out as far as those of spiders, wasps, flies.
Now here is Mr. Beetle’s head. It has two jaws and two feelers, the mouth, and the eyes. There is [Pg 78] a little horn shield over the mouth. In fact, the whole beetle is in a snug horn coat. We may call this coat a suit of armor.
The eyes of the beetle are like those of the fly. Very many eyes are set in what seem to be two big eyes. ”

“ They all help her until her ball is where she wishes it to be. How does she tell them what she needs? Who knows that? No one. I have seen four or five beetles at work on one ball.
When the ball is in the right spot, Mrs. Beetle digs a hole with her jaws and horny fore legs. Then she rolls the ball in. She fills up the hole with earth and presses it down flat.
This is not the only beetle that buries its eggs. There is another one, called the Sexton Beetle. When it finds a dead bird, or mouse, or frog, or other small animal, it sets to work to bury it. It digs a little grave for it. ”

“ A dead beetle loses all this wonderful luster. Even on the morning-glory in our gardens we may sometimes find these jeweled mites, or their fork-tailed, black larvae, or the tiny chrysalids suspended by their tails, although it is the wild bindweed that is ever their favorite abiding place. ”

“ Laws, as we read in ancient sages,
Have been like cobwebs in all ages.
Cobwebs for little flies are spread,
And laws for little folks are made;
But if an insect of renown,
Hornet or beetle, wasp or drone,
Be caught in quest of sport or plunder,
The flimsy fetter flies in sunder. ”

“ The beetles with their gigantic balls look like Atlas with the world on his back; only they go backward, and, with their heads down, push with the hind legs, as if a boy should roll a snow-ball with his legs while standing on his head. As we recommend the eland to John Bull, and the gigantic frog to France, we can confidently recommend this beetle to the dirty Italian towns and our own Sanitary Commissioners. ”

“ The soldiers were about to turn back, discouraged, when a black beetle lifted up its voice, and said:—"Yesterday, only yesterday, the Son of God passed this way." (An dé! an dé! cha Mac Dhé seachad.)
[This legend, lingering in Sutherland and Inverness-shire, has caused the death of many a beetle. Boys, if they find one, will stamp on it and say,—"Beetle! beetle! you won't see to-morrow:" i.e. live to tell any tales.]
x.—The Lonely Giant of Barra.
Once upon a time a sea captain, who had some horses on board, landed in Barra to get some hay. ”

“ one day, on tearing off some old bark, I saw two rare beetles, and seized one in each hand; then I saw a third and new kind, which I could not bear to lose, so that I popped the one which I held in my right hand into my mouth. Alas! it ejected some intensely acrid fluid, which burnt my tongue so that I was forced to spit the beetle out, which was lost, as was the third one. ”

“ Big beetles like to chase him. When the wee gun goes off in the big beetle’s face, the big beetle backs away. Then he folds down his feelers and stands still. He acts very much as a dog does when he drops his tail between his legs and runs off!
These little gun-owning beetles live in damp places. Often a group of them will hide under a stone. If you lift up the stone, the poor beetles are in a great fright. They begin to fire off their guns like a squad of soldiers. ”

“ There is a like list of interesting beetles and other insects, that play a large part in even your affairs, which you ought to watch during the summer: the honeybee, the big droning golden bumblebee, the large white-faced hornet that builds the paper nests in the bushes and trees, the gall-flies, the ichneumon-flies, the burying beetle, the tumble-bug beetle, the dragon-fly, the caddis-fly—these are only a few of [Pg 24] a whole world of insect folk about you, whose habits and life-histories are of utmost importance and of tremendous interest. ”

“ Bees and Spiders, Earwigs, Beetles and Snails, Dragon-flies, Grasshoppers, and Butterflies are familiar enough to us all; yet how many realise how 'fearfully and wonderfully' they are made? What a marvellously complex weapon is the 'sting' of the bee! What a wonderful 'rasp' the snail possesses! How many can tell how an insect smells, and where its organs of taste and hearing lie? ”

“ It is principally owing to the labours of these beetles that it happens that although you may see a dead mole, mouse, or bird lying in the corner of a field to-day, you shall look for it in vain next morning elsewhere than in a beetle-dug grave, as in the above instance. That a single pair of these comparatively small insects should be able to perform such a gigantic task in so short a time is, in truth, very wonderful, and must seem incredible to any one unacquainted with the habits and economy of the order. ”

“ Bees, flies, beetles, butterflies, fly from one flower to another with a drowsy murmur. On the trunk of the elder, amongst the ridges of the bark, numbers of ants are crawling, some ascending, some descending. Those ascending are the more eager. ”

“ Once we had a plague of little white moths, and occasionally, for a short while, visitations of a small flying beetle, whose instinct seemed to be to crawl into everything, making it safer to stuff one’s ears with cotton-wool. ”

“ The wings of a butterfly, for example, are very different from those of a beetle or a bee; and because of these differences in the wings, insects are divisible into several smaller groups, which we call orders. ”

“ The adult insect is a small, broad-oval beetle, about three-sixteenths of an inch long, black in color, but is covered with exceedingly minute scales, which give it a marbled black-and-white appearance. ”

“ This is not of use to kill what they eat, or to fight their enemies. The beetle seizes his prey with his jaws, or with his fore feet. But if you try to hold him, then he draws his body back, and drives this thorn into your hand.
Water-beetles have flat pads on their feet, as water-spiders do. The hairs on these pads hold tiny bubbles of air.
When these beetles wish to fly, they do not rise straight out of the water; they climb up the stem of some plant. Then, when they are high enough to make a good start, they spread their lovely wings, and skim away. ”

“ Of what size, then, can a beetle’s be?—especially that family of beetles which grow and cultivate mushrooms, just in the same way that ants do. It would be suggestive—though I hardly know of what—should it be found that, comparatively speaking, they have no brain at all. ”

“ To and fro in the sunbeams, whose misty shafts slant through the thickets, hover a crowd of winged things—of great bees, black or yellow or tipped with fiery red, flies of many hues, beetles light and dark—and the sound of their multitudinous wings seems to fill the hot summer air. Insects make up no small part, perhaps even the larger part, of the life of the woodland. ”

“ There it is that the beetles have their paradise. In loose heaps of stone, often collected to clear a stony pasture; in the wooden palings used to separate alp from alp; in the decaying lumber of the pine-forests, beetles both small and great are absolutely swarming. ”

“ Larva means mask, and pupa means baby.
LESSON XXIV. HOW TO LEARN ABOUT BEETLES.
No class of insects has been more studied and written about than beetles. Why is this? They are not as wise as the ants. They do not build homes and cities, as bees and wasps do. They make no honey and no wax. They have not the many trades of that busy Mrs. Wasp.
There are a few beetles which make little mud cells, or balls of dirt for their eggs, or weave little nests for the pupa. ”

“ A crowd of insects, flies, and bees, and beetles are coming out of their long hiding to sun their stiffened limbs. Butterflies flit lightly down the hedge-row, some newly waked from sleep, and some that have but just broken the dry husk of their chrysalis condition, and are spreading for the first time their beautiful wings. ”

“ Equally wonderful are the diverse developments of the mouth-organs of insects, the spiral tube of the butterfly or moth, the strong jaws of the great beetles, the lancets of the gnat, the sucking-disc of the fly,—all of them special modifications of the same set of structures. ”

“ The best places to look for all these beetles are the "keeper's trees," on which game-keepers hang up the jays and weasels they shoot, to encourage the others. If you tap one such dead weasel you will generally find it is simply swarming with insect life.
4.—NO MORE LEFT! THE GRUBS IN THEIR COCOONS TURNING INTO BEETLES.
Yet, strange to say, even the insect undertakers themselves are not without their ideas of beauty and their musical perceptions. ”

“ Through the activity of these insects very little horse-dung, save that which is trodden, is seen on the roads. They work summer and winter, and as one marches in the sun, with one’s eyes on the ground, one is astonished at the myriads of these beetles. ”

“ Some of the Beetles, especially the large ones, are so gorgeously colored and so richly polished that they are imitated, as closely as Art can imitate Nature, in precious stones and worn as ornaments. ”

“ The short-coat beetles are not the only ones that take lodgings. Perhaps you may hear your mother say that “the moths have got into her furs.” If she looks at the furs, she may find, not only moths, but small beetles. They are having a fine time eating up the fur! ”

“ From fruits and flowers we may turn to insect life, and, watch the air teeming with varieties of the same species, the thousands of butterflies and beetles, the many members of each class varying in instincts and peculiarities. ”

“ The hard black bodies of beetles are composed of it, and, wonderful to relate, of this substance the downy wings of the butterfly are made. You will remember that in the chapter on the eye of the bee we saw that the facets have a beautiful appearance; they too are made of chitine, as are the tendons, legs, hairs, membranes, and many other parts of the body.
The abdomen of the queen and of the worker is divided into six rings or belts, but the drone, having a somewhat [37] larger body, has seven. ”

“ Breaking off a part of the lump which held a half dozen or more of the tiny beetles, we carried it into the house and allowing it to melt in our hands we were surprised to find the lady-birds slowly begin to come back to life and its pleasures. ”

“ I mean so strange that all those beetles, or whatever they are, should carry a light in their tails that they can show or put out just when they like, and that though it’s so brilliant it is quite cool. ”

“ Quantities of small bees, wasps, flies, butterflies, and beetles - over a hundred species of insects - come seeking the nectar that wells up in each little tube, and the abundant pollen, which are greatly appreciated in early spring, when food is so scarce. ”

“ Even the blackest of them all, the crow,
Renders good service as your man-at-arms,
Crushing the beetle in his coat of mail,
And crying havoc on the slug and snail. ”

“ These beetles hover over the road on the wing, and on alighting proceed to roll the ball towards the nest, four or five of them standing on their hind-legs and working it forwards, or else rolling it with their heads close to the ground. ”

“ The beetles (Coleopters) have come on the scene in the Triassic, and prospered exceedingly. In some strata three-fourths of the insects are beetles, and as we find that many of them are wood-eaters, we are not surprised. ”

“ One day the Lord gathered together all the insects in the world, all the beetles, bugs, bees, mosquitoes, ants, locusts, grasshoppers, and other creatures who fly or hop or crawl, and shut them up in a huge sack well tied at the end. ”

“ These varieties of beetles mentioned are only a small handful among thousands, for there are more members of this great family than naturalists have yet been able to count. There are beetles that fly by night, and beetles that fly by day; some that live in the ground, others in the water, and yet others on trees and among the leaves and flowers. ”