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A RAMBLE ON RIVERTON BEACH.

{Continued}

To-day I ajri giving- "Alpha's"' third instalment or his ramble. The intrc<lucf on opi>pare<J on A».gu*t 12, and in tha nevfc section, which appeared on August 23. iv>foroncc- was ma-d-e to the varieties of Rhe'l ar.d p'l^llfish 'found' t^-°re, and to ' the trace's of Maorf life" iii, th-^ past in t^ of Oiyeps, hfiaps'of pipi shells, etc. I hope 'Alpha" will roncin«e Iris story, and tell us somethincr about the botany and geoloa-y of- the neisrhhourhood as- seen from the beach.

Hero and there- alone: the beach lie masses of seaweed. When these foave 1 "-been lying some timte and have begun' 'id decay they

will be found $o be inihahit^d by swarais" of flies and a great variety of beetles. Mi^ flies are. of a. peculiar .hairy-leggecl .kind,., and the beetles belong, chiefly , to tbs -familySfcaphylinidae. In this ?.ami)y th& elytra or wing-oases are very short ..and the true, wings are folded up and packed un<teraeath them. The abdomen is very flexible, an-d caai be.ouried jp 3v«r the back. The folding and padding of .the wings under - the elytra seems to be ac6bm,pliah€d by the movements of the wing' muscles, assisted perhaps by. the mobile extremity of the abdoirieii. Something over 9000 species of btaphyhnidas are known; and many of them are exceedingly minute" creatures. The largest kinds are not much more than an inch in length, and these are -popularly known in England as "cocktails," cir 'devil's coach horses." The biggest one found under the decaying kelp -s Staphylmus huttoni, a brownish-black fellow with powerful jams. Tho larvae «rf these ' beetles appear*© liye.ou the Wttifig seaweed, but it is .possible, as many of, the family are' carnivorous, that they f&d on" the grubs of their fellow lodgers the flies. " ' Tho "Staphs," aa they, sire familiarly called ■' by British entomordgiSTs, exhibit some of the most remarkable^ cases known, of. two -different creatures living- together in ' perfect goodwill and Tor, mutual benefit. Dr David Sharp, on- of t&e foremost living authorities on beetles, speaking o£ ,the . relations between the genera. Atemeles and Lrfimeehusa, and certain ants, says: "The beetles are never found out of the ants' nests— or. at anyrate, "Hot * very far f rpm them. ' The meat frip'ndly relations exist, between them and the' arits: they have patches of yellow hairs, p and' these apparently secrete some- substariee, with a flavour agreeable to the rtip. which lick * the beetles from time to time. On the other hand, the ants feed the beetles ; this they do by regurgitating food, at the request of the beetle, on to their lower lip, from which it i 3 thon taken by the beetle. Tha beetles in many of their movements exactly resemble the ants, and 'their .mode of requesting food, by stroking the .ants in certain ways, is quite ant-iike. So reciprocal is the friendship that if an ant i> in want of f ood the beetle will in turn disgorge "for the benefit of its host. .The young of the beetles are reared in the nssts by the ants, vi ho attend to 'them as carefully as they do to their own young," . The driftwood lying, about also gives shelter to many other klr.rA ,d beetles. During.. the summer months hardly a. piece .of wood can be turned ovei without disclosing one- or two membprs of the oder Coleoptera. Some peculiar globular weevils are amongst the most interesting forms, but these,- owing to their greyish colour, which harmonises well with tHs sandy surroundings, and their habit of remaining absolutely motionless when danger threatens,, are not by, any means easy to discover,' But all .the coastal beetles -ire not confined to seaweed and drift timber. On the dry, bare, sandhills, ;n; n the hottest sunshine, thousands of little objects scaice larger than a pin's head may be seen scurrying about, r These are the little beetles known to science- as Physcosecis. disco idaea. They seem to perform- 'the of scavengers, and half a dozen mny often •be ss-sn clustered round a dead midget or a tragment of a defunct sandhoppor. Another curious little beetle is the Inopelonia tuli'j-inosa Thrs species is about .the same size as the discoidsea. but its habit? are quite different. 1 It is found on the rough herbage further back from the shore -line. It has the peculiar attribute — for a beetle — of being able to hop long distances. The hind legs are very stout and strong, and so well docs their possessor execute its unusual mode of progression, that it might' readily be mistaken for a certain insect whose hooping and biting capabilities have made it notorious.

The larger kinds of Coleontera are represented by a fine black ground beetle, which may often be met with hurrying along th-9 sand slopss. It, probably lives on the 6and-hoppevs,. and I once found one apparently engaged in digging one of these crustaceans out of ite hole. One other beetle may be mentioned— the clumsy-look-ing dor boetle, Per-coptus truncatus. It is quite a common thing to find these dead, but the living insect ib, a great rarity. Such a eurioiis phenomenon is partly to be accounted iov by the beetle's nocturnal habit 3, and partly by the fact that a dead beetle, b'Mny buried at once by the drifting eand, would dry up and become, as ifc were, stuffed with sand -grains, and in this condition would be preserved for years. St'll continuing our stroll along the verge where sea and shore meet, we come upon rflies that carry the mind back to parly dajs — indeed, back to the days before Invercargill was thought of. back to the wild, five time.s of the whaling sett.emenU and the Maori Kaik. These gleaming vvhita ribs and massive vertebras that project fioin the sand heaps epeak of quito another life than our own uneventful existence. They t<?ll of deeds of darinjr seamanship, of feat* of endurance, of pluck and nerve supreme, or the om Chance and her like and of v poneraUon of men to whom dangers- and hard&nips vvere merely life's daily lound.

Permanent link to this item

https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/OW19091117.2.272

Bibliographic details

Otago Witness, Issue 2905, 17 November 1909, Page 83

Word Count
1,016

A RAMBLE ON RIVERTON BEACH. Otago Witness, Issue 2905, 17 November 1909, Page 83

A RAMBLE ON RIVERTON BEACH. Otago Witness, Issue 2905, 17 November 1909, Page 83

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