The larvae are much more active than beetle-larvae usually are, and many of them are very conspicuous when running about on plants to hunt their prey. They usually cast their skins three times, and sometimes concomitantly change a good deal in colour and form; the larval life does not usually exceed four or five weeks; at the end of which time the larva suspends itself by the posterior extremity, which is glued by a secretion to some object; the larval skin is pushed back to the anal extremity, disclosing the pupa; this differs in several respects from the usual pupa of beetles; it is harder, and is coloured, frequently conspicuously spotted, and dehisces to allow the escape of the beetle, so that the metamorphosis is altogether more like that of Lepidoptera than that of Coleoptera. There is much variety in the larvae; some of them bear large, complexly-spined, projections; those of the group Scymnites have small depressions on the surface, from which it has been ascertained that waxy secretions exude; but in _Scymnus minimus_ no such excretions are formed. Certain species, when pupating, do not shuffle the skin to the extremity of the body, but retain it as a covering for the pupa. The larvae that feed on plants are much less active than the predaceous forms. We are well supplied with Coccinellidae in Britain, forty species being known here. The systematic position of Coccinellidae amongst the Coleoptera has been for long a moot point. Formerly they were associated with various other beetles having three-jointed, or apparently three-jointed, feet, as a series with the name Trimera, or {239}Pseudotrimera. But they are generally placed in the Clavicorn series, near Endomychidae. Verhoeff has recently made considerable morphological studies on the male genital organs of Coleoptera, and as the result, he concludes that Coccinellidae differ radically from all other Coleoptera as regards these structures, and he therefore treats them as a distinct series or sub-order, termed Siphonophora. The genus _Lithophilus_ has been considered doubtfully a member of Coccinellidae, as the tarsi possess only in a slight degree the shape characteristic of the family: Verhoeff finds that they are truly Coccinellidae, forming a distinct division, Lithophilini; and our little species of _Coccidula_, which have somewhat the same appearance as Lithophilini, he treats as another separate group, Coccidulini.