Dynastidæ—Hercules-beetle, etc.
The Hercules-beetle, Dynastes Hercules, is four, five, or even sometimes six inches long, and a native of South America. It is said great numbers of these immense insects are sometimes seen on the Mammæa-tree, rasping off the rind of the slender branches by working nimbly round them with their horns, till they cause the juice to flow, which they drink to intoxication, and thus fall senseless to
the ground! These stories, however, as the learned Fabricius has well observed, seem not very probable; since the thoracic horn, being bearded on its lower surface, would undoubtedly be made bare by this operation.[131]
Col. St. Clair, though he confesses he never could take one of these insects in the act of sawing off the limbs of trees, or ascertain what they worked for, gravely repeats the above old story, and says that during the operation they make a noise exactly like that of a knife-grinder holding steel against the stone of his wheel; but a thousand knife-grinders at work at the same moment, he continues, could not equal their noise! He calls this beetle hence the knife-grinder.[132]
The Goliath-beetle, Dynastes Goliathus, is said to be roasted and eaten by the natives of South America and Africa.[133]
The enormous prices of £30, £40, and even £50 used to be asked for these latter beetles a piece; fine specimens for cabinets even now bring from five to six pounds.[134]
The large pulpy larva of a species of Dynastidæ—the Oryctes rhinoceros, called by the Singhalese Gascooroominiya—is, notwithstanding its repulsive aspect, esteemed a luxury by the Malabar coolies.[135]
Immediately after mentioning the above fact, Tennent records the following interesting superstition respecting a beetle when found in a house after sunset:
“Among the superstitions of the Singhalese arising out of their belief in demonology, one remarkable one is connected with the appearance of a beetle when observed on the floor of a dwelling-house after nightfall. The popular belief is that in obedience to a certain form of incantation (called cooroominiya-pilli) a demon in shape of a beetle is sent to the house of some person or family whose destruction it is intended to compass, and who presently falls sick and dies. The only means of averting this catastrophy is, that some one, himself an adept in necromancy, should perform a counter-charm, the effect of which is to send back the disguised beetle to destroy his original employer; for in such a conjuncture the death of one or the other
is essential to appease the demon whose intervention has been invoked. Hence the discomfort of a Singhalese on finding a beetle in his house after sunset, and his anxiety to expel but not kill it.”[136]
The Dynastes Goliathus, Moufet says, “like to beetles (Ateuchus sacer), hath no female, but it shapes its own form itself. It produceth its young one from the ground by itself, which Joach. Camerarius did elegantly express, when he sent to Pennius the shape of this insect out of the storehouse of natural things of the Duke of Saxony; with these verses:
A bee begat me not, nor yet did I proceed
From any female, but myself I breed.
For it dies once in a year,” continues Moufet, “and from its own corruption, like a Phœnix, it lives again (as Moninus witnesseth) by heat of the sun.
A thousand summers’ heat and winters’ cold
When she hath felt, and that she doth grow old,
Her life that seems a burden, in a tomb
O’ spices laid, comes younger in her room.”[137]