Pliny says that in Thrace, near Olynthus, there is a small locality, the only one in which the beetle cannot exist; from which circumstance it has received the name of "Cantharolethus — Fatal-to-the-Beetle."
Dynastidae — 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 Mammea-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.
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.
The Goliath-beetle, Dynastes Goliathus, is said to be roasted and eaten by the natives of South America and Africa.
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.
The large pulpy larva of a species of Dynastidae — the Oryctes rhinoceros, called by the Singhalese Gascoorooininiya — is, notwithstanding its repulsive aspect, esteemed a luxury by the Malabar coolies.
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 catastrophe 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."
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 Phoenix, 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."
Melolonthidae — Cock-chafers.
The family of insects, commonly called Cock-chafers, Hedge-chafers, May-bugs, and Dorrs (from the Irish dord, humming, buzzing, or from the Anglo-Saxon dora, a locust or drone) have been included by Fabricius in the genus Melolontha — a word which retains an odd notion of the Greeks respecting them, viz., that they were produced from or with the flowers of apple-trees. It is a name also by which the Greeks themselves used to distinguish the same kind of insects.
In Sweden the peasants look upon the grub of the Cock-chafer, Melolontha vulgaris, as furnishing an unfailing prognostic whether the ensuing winter will be mild or severe; if the animal have a bluish hue (a circumstance which arises from its being replete with food), they affirm it will be mild, but on the contrary if it be white, the weather will be severe: and they carry this so far as to foretell, that if the anterior be white and the posterior blue, the cold will be most severe at the beginning of the winter. Hence they call this grub Bemärkelse-mask — prognostic worm.
An absurd notion obtains in England that the larvae of the May-bugs are changed into briers.
The following quotation is from the Chronicle of Holinshed: "The 24 day of Februarie (1575), being the feast of Saint Matthie, on which dai the faire was kept at Tewkesburie, a strange thing happened there. For after a floud which was not great, but such as therby the medows neere adioning were covered with water, and in the after noone there came downe the river of Severne great numbers of flies and beetles (Melolontha vulgaris), such as in summer evenings use to strike men in the face, in great heapes, a foot thicke above the water, so that to credible mens judgement there were scene within a paire of buts length of those flies above a hundred quarters. The mils there abouts were dammed up with them for the space of foure dales after, and then were clensed by digging them out with shovels: from whence they came is yet unknowne but the dale was cold and a hard frost."
Such another remarkable phenomenon is recorded to have occurred in Ireland, in the summer of 1688. The Cock-chafers, in this instance, were in such immense numbers, "that when," as the chronicler, Dr. Molyneux, relates, "towards evening or sunset, they would arise, disperse, and fly about, with a strange humming noise, much like the beating of drums at some distance; and in such vast incredible numbers, that they darkened the air for the space of two or three miles square. The grinding of leaves," he continues, "in the mouths of this vast multitude altogether, made a sound very much resembling the sawing of timber."
In a short time after the appearance of these beetles in these immense numbers, they had so entirely eaten up and destroyed the leaves of the trees, that the whole country, for miles around, though in the middle of summer, was left as bare as in the depth of winter.
During the unfavorable seasons of the weather, which followed this plague, the swine and poultry would watch under the trees for the falling of the beetles, and feed and fatten upon them; and even the poorer sort of the country people, the country then laboring under a scarcity of provision, had a way of dressing them, and lived upon them as food. In 1695, Ireland was again visited with a plague of this same kind.
In Normandy, according to Moufet, the Cock-chafers make their appearance every third year. In 1785, many provinces of France were so ravaged by them, that a premium was offered by the government for the best mode of destroying them. During this year, a farmer, near Blois, employed a number of children and the poorer people to destroy the Cock-chafers at the rate of two liards a hundred, and in a few days they collected fourteen thousand.
The county of Norfolk in England seems occasionally to have suffered much from the ravages of these insects; and Bingley tells us that "about sixty years ago, a farm near Norwich was so infested with them, that the farmer and his servants affirmed they had gathered eighty bushels of them and the grubs had done so much injury, that the court of the city, in compassion to the poor fellow's misfortune, allowed him twenty-five pounds."
The seeming blunders and stupidity of these insects have long been proverbial, as in the expressions, "blind as a beetle," and "beetle-headed."
Cetoniidae — Rose-chafers.
A very pretty species of the Cetoniidae, the Agestrata luconica, is of a fine brilliant metallic green, and found in the Philippine Islands. These the ladies of Manilla keep as pets in small bamboo cages, and carry them about with them wheresoever they may go.
Buprestidae — Burn-cows.
Many species of the Buprestidae are decorated with highly brilliant metallic tints, like polished gold upon an emerald ground, or azure upon a ground of gold; and their elytra, or wing-coverings, are employed by the ladies of China, and also of England, for the purpose of embroidering their dresses. The Chinese have also attempted imitations of these insects in bronze, in which they succeed so well that the copy may be sometimes mistaken for the reality. In Ceylon and throughout India, the golden wing-cases of two of this tribe, the Sternocera chrysis and S. sternicornis, are used to enrich the embroidery of the Indian zenana, while the lustrous joints of the legs are strung on silken threads, and form necklaces and bracelets of singular brilliancy. The Buprestis attenuata, ocellata and vittata are also wrought into various devices and trinkets by the Indians. The B. vittata is much admired among them. This insect is found in great abundance in China, and thence exported into India, where it is distributed at a low price.
Mr. Osbeck saw in China a Buprestis maxima, which had been dried, and to which were fastened leaden wings so painted as to make them look like the wings of butterflies. This artificial monster, he adds, was to be sold in the vaults among other trifles. The B. maxima is set up along with Butterflies in small boxes, and vended in the streets of Chinese cities.
So many species of the Buprestidae are clothed with such brilliant colors, that Geoffroy has thought proper to designate them all under the generic appellation of Richard. The origin of this name is as singular as its application is fantastical. It was originally given to the Jay, in consequence of the facility with which that bird was taught to pronounce the word.
Modern writers have been much divided in their opinion as to what genus the celebrated Buprestis of the ancients belongs. All indeed have regarded it as of the order Coleoptera, but here their agreement ceases. Linnaeus seems to have looked upon it as a species of the genus to which he has given its name. Geoffroy thinks it to be a Carabus or Cicindela; M. Latreille, to the genus Meloe; and Kirby and Spence to Mylabris.
Of this Buprestis, Pliny says: "Incorporat with goat sewer, it taketh away the tettars called lichenes that be in the face." And Dr. James says that insects of this family "are all in common, antiseptic, exulcerating, and (possess) a heating quality; for which reason, they are mixed up with medicines adapted to the cure of a Carcinoma, Lepra, and the malignant Lichen. Mixed in emollient pessaries, they provoke the Catamenial discharges."
The Greeks, it is said, commended the Buprestis in food.
Elateridae — Fire-flies, Spring-beetles, etc.
In an historical sense, the most interesting species of the family Elateridae is the Elater noctilucus, a native of the West Indies, and called by the inhabitants, Cucujus. From an ancient translation of Peter Martyr's History of the West Indies, we make the following quotation, which contains many curious facts relative to this insect:
"Whoso wanteth Cucuji, goeth out of the house in the first twilight of the night, carrying a burning fire-brand in his hande, and ascendeth the next hillocke, that the Cucuji may see it, and swingeth the fire-brand about calling Cucuji aloud, and beating the ayre with often calling and crying out Cucuji, Cucuji. . . . Beholde the desired number of Cucuji, at what time, the hunter casteth the fire-brand out of his hande. Some Cucuji sometimes followeth the fire-brand, and lighteth on the grounde, then is he easily taken. . . . The hunter havinge the hunting Cucujus, returneth home, and shutting the doore of the house, letteth the praye goe. The Cucujus loosed, swiftly flyeth about the whole house seeking gnatts, under their hanging bedds, and about the faces of them that sleepe, whiche the gnattes used to assayle, they seem to execute the office of watchmen, that such as are shut in, may quietly rest. Another pleasant and profitable commodity proceedeth from the Cucuji. As many eyes as every Cucujus openeth, the host enjoyeth the light of so many candles: so that the Inhabitants spinne, sewe, weave, and daunce by the light of the flying Cucuji. The Inhabitants think that the Cucujus is delighted with the harmony and melodie of their singing, and that he also exerciseth his motion in the ayre according to the action of their dancing. . . . Our men also read and write by that light, which always continueth untill hee have gotten enough gnatts whereby he may be well fedd. . . . There is also another wonderfull commodity proceeding from the Cucujus: the Islanders, appoynted by our men, goe with their good will by night with 2 Cucuji tyed to the great tooes of their feete: (for the travailer goeth better by direction of the lights of the Cucuji, then if hee brought so many candels with him, as the Cucuji open eyes) he also carryeth another Cucujus in his hande to seeke the Hutiae by night (Hutiae are a certayne kind of Cony, a little exceeding a mouse in bignesse.) . . . They also go a fishing by the lights of the Cucuji. . . . In sport, and merriment, or to the intent to terrifie such as are affrayed of every shaddow, they say that many wanton wild fellowes sometimes rubbed their faces by night with the fleshe of a Cucujus being killed, with purpose to meete their neighbors with a flaming countenance . . . for the face being annointed with the lumpe or fleshy parte of the Cucujus, shineth like a flame of fire."