The Scarabs

Dominion, Volume 27, Issue 252, 21 July 1934, Page 20

The Scarabs

By J. Drummond, F.L.S., F.Z.S., for “The Dominion.”

HE Scarabee was the most interesting person who sat at Oliver "'ija Wendell "Holmes’s breakfast-table and broke- into conversations | skilfully planned by the Poet. They all had a kindly feeling for sj him. Even the emotional Young Girl, who wrote stories for the newspapers, and whom the Poet culled Scheherazade, liked him. With deeper insight than the others, the Poet saw in him a man with a purpose. an earnest man knowing one thing well, probably better than anybody else in the world, but modest and tolerant, not puffed up with conceit. He studied insects; not insects generally, but only beetles, the Coleoptera, and only one section'of them, the Scarabs; and he found his life too short to become more than very distantly acquainted with that single group. “I suppose you are,an entomologist?” the Poet said. "Not quite so ambitious as that, sir,” the Scarabee replied. “I should like to put my eyes on the individual entitled to that name! No man can be'truly called an entomologist. The subject is too vast for any one human intelligence to grasp. lam often spoken of as a Coleopterist, but I have no right to so comprehensive a name. ■The genus Scarabaeus is what 1 have chiefly confined myself to, and ought to study exclusively. They are quite enough for the labour of one man’s life. Call me a Scarabeeist -..if you will. I have no friends except a spider; nothing loves me better than it does, that I know of. I thought I had a friend once, but he watched me at work and stole from me the discovery of a new species, and, what is more, had it named after himself. Since that, time I have liked spiders better than men.” The Scarabee had some idea of the Scarabs’ importance, diversity and persistency; but not an adequate one. During the seventy-five years that have passed since those chats over the tea-cups at the breakfast-table, the Scarabs have been studied by men of all nations, in. all positions, from the highest to the humblest. The Scarab literature has increased immeasurably. A small, exclusive library would not hold it It is added to every week. The result is merely to disclose the wide dimensions of the Scarabs’ world and to show how little is known of them. Most of them are medium in size, but the biggest beetles are members of their family. Many are dull and drab in colour. Others have bright colours. Not a few are very beautiful.

They are one of the most numerous beetle families, comprising more than 14,000 known species. Hundreds of species are added to the list every year. If the Scarabee had as many lives as a cat he would have accumulated much knowledge of the Scarabs, but his study would still have been too vast for ills mind. It is too vast for the combined intellectual force now concentrated on it. ■ ’. 1 ■ With between eighty and ninety species of Scarabs, New Zealand lacks the ball-rollers, whose very strange methods were recorded, by Fabre. He ibserved a typical species, Scarabaeus saeer, in Southern France.- A female makes a ball of food, sometimes as big as a golf-ball, and rolls It along the ground by using her hind legs, or shoving with her broad head, or walking backward and dragging the ball with her front legs, exercising strength and patience. Another female often helps to roll. the bali to a desired place When the owner begins to excavate a chamber for the ball, the false friend .ometimes steals the ball and gets away with it. Egyptologists have an ,pinion that ancient Egyptians concluded that these beetles, by rolling their balls, typified revolutions of the planets and of the moon. They , regarded the Scarabs as sacred, and they placed stone effigies.of them in tombs. The manuka beetle is one of New Zealand’s brilliant Scarabs. Popularly, Scarabs are called chafers. This species, Pyronota festiva, is often called the green chafer. It wears bright green colours, but it riiay change to a coppery hue. Hundreds of members of .the. species in November and December may be seen on a large tl-tree. Other native shrubs attract it, and it likes the eucalypts,. stripping their .leaves. - The most notorious Scarab In New Zealand is the grass-grub, Odontrla zealaudica. - In its adult form it is brown, smooth and shiny, about half an inch long. It is troublesome in lawns, and sometimes completely ruins pastures. This species is one of a numerous company of-Odontrla, In all no fewer than twenty-eight species, all working mischief as grubs, and many as adults also. If elegance is the only consideration, New Zealand should envy Australia in the possession of Scarabs called flower-chafers and rose-chafers. They frequent flowers. They are superb, but they are outshone by members of another family, Australia’s radiant, exquisite and unmatchable jewel-beetles, garnished with tiny metallic bosses which, under a lens, gleam in green, gold and multi-colour.