_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 larvæ 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 _Cassidiadæ_ 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.]