[Footnote 1:  Ateuchus sacer; Copris sagax; C. capucinus, &c. &c.]

[Illustration:  LONGHORN BEETLE (BATEROCERA RUBUS).]

The Coco-nut Beetle.—­In the luxuriant forests of Ceylon the extensive family of Longicorns[1] and Passalidae live in destructive abundance.  To the coco-nut planters the ravages committed by beetles are painfully familiar.[2] The larva of one species of Dynastida, the Oryctes rhinoceros, called by the Singhalese “Gascooroominiya,” makes its way into the younger trees, descending from the top, and after perforating them in all directions, forms a cocoon of the gnawed wood and sawdust, in which it reposes during its sleep as a pupa, till the arrival of the period when it emerges as a perfect beetle.  Notwithstanding the repulsive aspect of the large pulpy larvae of these beetles, they are esteemed a luxury by the Malabar coolies, who so far avail themselves of the privilege accorded by the Levitical law, which permitted the Hebrews to eat “the beetle after his kind."[3]

[Footnote 1:  The engraving on the preceding page represents in its various transformations one of the most familiar and graceful of the longicorn beetles of Ceylon, the Batocera rubus.]

[Footnote 2:  There is a paper in the Journ. of the Asiat.  Society of Ceylon, May, 1845, by Mr. CAPPER, on the ravages perpetrated by these beetles.  The writer had recently passed through several coco-nut plantations, “varying in extent from 20 to 150 acres, and about two to three years old:  and in these he did not discover a single young tree untouched by the cooroominiya.”—­P. 49.]

[Footnote 3:  Leviticus, xi. 22.]

Amongst 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 the 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 to kill it.

Tortoise Beetles.—­There is one family of insects, the members of which cannot fail to strike the traveller by their singular beauty, the Cassididae or tortoise beetles, in which the outer shell overlaps the body, and the limbs are susceptible of being drawn entirely within it.  The rim is frequently of a different tint from the centre, and one species which I have seen is quite startling from the brilliancy of its colouring, which gives it the appearance of a ruby enclosed in a frame of pearl; but this wonderful effect disappears immediately on the death of the insect.