The Goliath-beetle, _Dynastes Goliathus_, is said to be roasted and eaten by the natives of South America and Africa.[133] The enormous prices of £30, £40, and even £50 used to be asked for these latter beetles a piece; fine specimens for cabinets even now bring from five to six pounds.[134] The large pulpy larva of a species of Dynastidæ--the _Oryctes rhinoceros_, called by the Singhalese _Gascooroominiya_--is, notwithstanding its repulsive aspect, esteemed a luxury by the Malabar coolies.[135] Immediately after mentioning the above fact, Tennent records the following interesting superstition respecting a beetle when found in a house after sunset: “Among the superstitions of the Singhalese arising out of their belief in demonology, one remarkable one is connected with the appearance of a beetle when observed on the floor of a dwelling-house after nightfall. The popular belief is that in obedience to a certain form of incantation (called _cooroominiya-pilli_) a demon in shape of a beetle is sent to the house of some person or family whose destruction it is intended to compass, and who presently falls sick and dies. The only means of averting this catastrophy is, that some one, himself an adept in necromancy, should perform a counter-charm, the effect of which is to send back the disguised beetle to destroy his original employer; for in such a conjuncture the death of one or the other is essential to appease the demon whose intervention has been invoked. Hence the discomfort of a Singhalese on finding a beetle in his house after sunset, and his anxiety to expel but not kill it.”[136] The _Dynastes Goliathus_, Moufet says, “like to beetles (_Ateuchus sacer_), hath no female, but it shapes its own form itself. It produceth its young one from the ground by itself, which Joach. Camerarius did elegantly express, when he sent to Pennius the shape of this insect out of the storehouse of natural things of the Duke of Saxony; with these verses: A bee begat me not, nor yet did I proceed From any female, but myself I breed. For it dies once in a year,” continues Moufet, “and from its own corruption, like a Phœnix, it lives again (as Moninus witnesseth) by heat of the sun. A thousand summers’ heat and winters’ cold When she hath felt, and that she doth grow old, Her life that seems a burden, in a tomb O’ spices laid, comes younger in her room.”[137] Melolonthidæ--Cock-chafers. The family of insects, commonly called _Cock-chafers_, _Hedge-chafers_, _May-bugs_, and _Dorrs_ (from the Irish _dord_, humming, buzzing, or from the Anglo-Saxon _dora_, a locust or drone) have been included by Fabricius in the genus _Melolontha_,--a word which retains an odd notion of the Greeks respecting them, viz., that they were produced from or with the flowers of apple-trees. It is a name also by which the Greeks themselves used to distinguish the same kind of insects.