The next group includes the curious insects popularly known as Burying-Beetles, which inter the bodies of small animals in the ground, scooping out the earth from underneath them by means of their broad and powerful heads, and shovelling it back when the carcases have sunk to a sufficient depth. The eggs are laid in the carrion thus buried. Most of these beetles are distinguished by broad blotches or bars of orange on the wing-cases, but one common British species is entirely black.
Allied to these, and very similar in habits, are the Flat Burying-Beetles, of which there are about a dozen British species. In the best known of these the thorax is dull red in colour, and the black wing-cases are curiously wrinkled. Another species is reddish yellow in colour, with two round black spots on each wing-case. It is found on oak-trees, and feeds upon caterpillars.
The Leaf-horned Beetles are distinguished by the fact that the terminal joints of the antennæ lie one upon another like the leaves of a book. In many cases they can be expanded at will into a broad fan-like club. The well-known Stag-beetle of Great Britain is a representative of this group. It is a somewhat local species, being plentiful in some parts of the country, and entirely unknown in others. The grub lives for several years in the trunks of elm-trees, feeding upon the solid wood. When fully grown, it buries itself in the earth, and constructs a large cocoon, in which it passes the chrysalis stage of its existence. The perfect beetle emerges in November, but remains within the cocoon until the following June. In the female the jaws are very much smaller than in the male, but are nevertheless more formidable as weapons. The insect may often be seen flying on warm summer evenings.
Photos by W. P. Dando, F.Z.S.] [Regent's Park.
TWO BURYING-BEETLES.
These insects are about an inch in length; many are black, but others have orange-red bands on the wing-cases.
A still larger insect belonging to the same group is the Hercules Beetle, found in the West Indies and tropical America, a male of average size being nearly 5 inches in length. In this beetle the thorax is prolonged into a horn, which is curved downwards, while the head is produced into a similar horn curved upwards, so that the two look like a pair of enormous jaws. It has been stated that these horns, both of which are furnished with tooth-like projections, are employed in sawing off the smaller branches of trees, the beetle grasping a bough firmly, and flying round and round in a circle, till the wood is completely cut through. This assertion, however, is totally unworthy of credit. An example of the beetle—evidently imported—was recently found crawling on a hedge near Biggleswade.
One of the largest of all known beetles is Drury's Goliath Beetle, a native of the Gaboon, whose body is almost as big as the closed fist of a man. It appears to feed, while a grub, on the wood of decaying trees, and undergoes its transformation to the chrysalis state in an earthen cocoon, the peculiarity of which is that a thick belt, or ridge, runs round the middle. How this belt is formed is a mystery, as it lies upon the outside, while the grub necessarily constructs the cocoon from the inside. Several living examples of this beetle were exhibited in the summer of 1898 in the Insect-house of the Zoological Gardens in the Regent's Park, where they remained for five or six weeks, feeding on the flesh of melons. A photograph of this beetle will be found in the Coloured Plate.
The common Cockchafer belongs to another division of the same group. This insect is extremely injurious, as the grub lives for three years or more underground, feeding on the roots of various cultivated plants. The perfect beetle appears in May and June, and is only too plentiful almost everywhere. A month or so later its place is taken by the Summer Chafer, or June Bug, which may often be seen flying in hundreds round the tops of low trees soon after sunset, while the smaller Coch-y-bonddhu—the "Cockerbundy" of the angler—often appears about the same time in hundreds of thousands. The beautiful Rose-beetle, too, with its bright golden-green wing-cases marked with wavy whitish lines, may often be seen sunning itself in roses or on the blossoms of pinks.