The beetles (Fig. 199) are insects having their fore wings thickened to constitute sheaths or covers for the lower pair, used in flight. Their mouths are adapted for biting, and they pass through a complete metamorphosis. There are about ninety thousand species, ranging from minute creatures to huge, lumbering goliaths. When walking the beetle presents a trim appearance, enveloped in a gleaming armor of the highest polish, and often ablaze with metallic tints, but when it flies the elytra, or wing covers, are thrown up, and a pair of soft, silken wings flutter out, stiffen, and bear the beetle away.

The head of the beetle is small and adapted for biting (Fig. 200); the digestive apparatus is simple. The most noticeable feature of many are the antennÆ (Fig. 201), which often are very long and ornamental. The eyes are compound. The legs are strong and powerful. The beetles spend little time in flying, many being flesh eaters and continually searching for game under refuse and in dark places. They lay eggs which are deposited in the ground, or in special cavities made in wood, which hatch into larvÆ (Fig. 202). In the tiger beetle the larvÆ resemble white worms. In the rose beetle they look like grubs. These in time change to helpless pupÆ.

The June bug, the beetle which dashes into rooms, blindly charging lights of all kinds, is a familiar example. Its larva is white and very destructive. On my lawn in California the Bermuda grass often turns white, and sections a foot square can be lifted, having been cut off from the roots by this destructive larva of the June bug, which during this stage of its existence lives underground, eating roots and plants of various kinds. For two years this beetle (Fig. 203) lives a subterranean, marauding life, growing and shedding its skin. It is often considered a complete animal, but at the end of this period it changes into what is called the pupa stage, which does not move; the pupÆ are white, soft, helpless creatures which are found around the roots of rose bushes in great number, and which are so appreciated by mocking birds that they and the blackbirds invariably follow me about the garden when I am overturning the soil with the trowel. Finally the pupa changes into the perfect insect.

The larvÆ of some of the spring beetles remain in the "grub" stage five years, and are known as wire worms, doing a vast amount of damage.

The girdler beetle bores holes in tender limbs of the hickory, then systematically girdles the limb below the eggs, so that by the time the young hatch they have soft, dead wood to feed upon. The bark borer (Fig. 204) penetrates the bark of trees, and cuts winding tunnels here and there, in which are placed its eggs. Among the most attractive of the beetles are the carnivorous sexton beetles. They find dead bodies with all the skill of a vulture, burrow beneath them and deposit their eggs within the body, where the young feed. The work these beetles accomplish in destroying animals and even burying them renders them valuable scavengers. Among the destructive beetles are the buffalo bugs (Fig. 205), which have been introduced from Europe; the larva of these is a strange, fuzzy little creature (a).