The true blistering beetle has complete wings and wing cases; its body is long and narrow, varying in size, but in general about nine lines long and two or three lines wide. It is of a rich green and golden colour, very shining and delicately tinctured, with the antennæ black, except the first joint. “The cantharis is one of those insects which have been most anciently and most universally known. Physicians, who were the first natural philosophers, and the first observers of nature, have made mention of the cantharides in the remotest times. But they have only considered them under that relation which was most suitable to their own profession, and as furnishing to medicine one of its most powerful agents. The naturalist, who is less anxious about becoming acquainted with the medicinal virtues of the dead, than with the peculiar habits of the living cantharides, is yet very far from having acquired in this respect extensive and satisfactory information. The only species which has been deemed to be endowed with useful properties, has caused a forgetfulness of all the others which compose the entire genus; and all that we know in general respecting these insects, is that in our European climates they live on plants, devour the leaves of certain trees, shun the cold, appear at the commencement of spring, and disappear at the beginning of autumn. * * * It is more than probable that experiments on insects relatively to their utility in medicine and the arts, have been too much neglected in general. Their diminutive size has doubtless caused them to be too much despised. It cannot however be doubted, that there must be a great number of them whose virtues are at least equal to those of the cantharides, and many others which are less acrid and less caustic might in many cases be taken internally, with less danger and a greater chance of success.” The early history of this insect is not well known. The female buries her eggs in the ground; the larvæ have a soft body of a yellowish white colour; they live in the earth, and feed on various roots. When full grown they change into the nymph state in the earth, and do not emerge from it until they have assumed the perfect insect form.