Copy 2

On the history and natural arrangement of insects / By William Swainson and W.E. Shuckard.

  • William Swainson
Date:
1840
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the history and natural arrangement of insects / By William Swainson and W.E. Shuckard. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    344/420 (page 334)
    with a similar structure, has the four first joints of the tarsi with a long membranous appendage; and in Tillus, the sexes of one have been considered generally distinct species. In those which have but four dis- tinct joints to the tarsi, there is a greater uniformity in the general structure of the antenne, although Eno- plium has its three terminal joints separated and ser- rated. Some of the species of Clerus are parasites in the nests of certain mason bees ; and the genus Thana- simus occurs upon felled trees and timber, — its larva preying upon those of many of the wood-feeding ge- nera, as Apate, Bostrichus, Anobium, &c. They are all very active insects; and some of the latter, in the distribution of their colours, and general form, have a remarkable resemblance to the hymenopterous Mutille, and whence they have derived their specific names. All these insects have the head rather wider than the thorax ; the latter cylindrical, and constricted at its base, or swoln about the centre ; although some, as Co- rynetes and Necrobia, have the sides of the latter slightly margined. These are found, usually, among heaps of bones, or upon dry carrion; and one of the latter is celebrated for being the cause of saving Latreille’s life during the sanguinary period of the French revolution ; in as far as the circumstance of its capture, in his pri- son cell, interested, through the medium of the surgeon that attended him, some influential scientific men, who stayed his debarkation to the colonies in a ship that was atrociously foredoomed to perish, with its cargo of transports, almost within sight of their native land. The largest species occur in the Mexican genus Cymatodera, and the universal Opi/us. Europe is rich in species of the family ; but New Holland appears to be their me- tropolis, if we may judge from the numbers, and the forms, we have seen recently imported thence. Very many genera are still uncharacterised in this interesting group. [(290—296.) W. KE. Sh.]