The Coco-nut Beetle.—­In the luxuriant forests of Ceylon, the extensive family of Longicorns live in destructive abundance.  Their ravages are painfully familiar to the coco-nut planters.[1] The larva of one species of large dimensions, Batocera rubus[2], called by the Singhalese “Cooroominya” makes its way into the stems of the younger trees, and after perforating them in all directions, it 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:  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 cooroominya.”—­P. 49.]

[Footnote 2:  Called also B. octo-maculatus; Lamia rubus, Fabr.]

[Footnote 3:  Leviticus, xi. 22.]

Tortoise Beetles.—­There is one family of insects, the members of which cannot fail to strike the traveller by their singular beauty, the Cassidiadae 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.[1]

[Footnote 1:  One species, the Cassida farinosa, frequent in the jungle which surrounded my official residence at Kandy, is covered profusely with a snow-white powder, arranged in delicate filaments, which it moves without dispersing:  but when dead they fall rapidly to dust.]

ORTHOPTERA. The Soothsayer.—­But the admiration of colours is still less exciting than the astonishment created by the forms in which some of the insect families present themselves, especially the “soothsayers” (Mantidae) and “walking leaves.”  The latter[1], exhibiting the most cunning of all nature’s devices for the preservation of her creatures, are found in the jungle in all varieties of hue, from the pale yellow of an opening bud to the rich green of the full-blown leaf, and the withered tint of decaying foliage.  And so perfect is the imitation in structure and articulation, that these amazing insects when at rest are almost indistinguishable from the verdure around them:  not the wings alone being modelled to resemble ribbed and fibrous follicles, but every joint of the legs being expanded into a broad plait like a half-opened leaflet.