The _Osmoderma eremita_ is a large insect, of purple colour, formerly common in the environs of Paris, and which, now-a-days, cannot be found nearer than Fontainebleau. One must look for them in earth which fills up the cavity of old willows or of pear trees. The smell of Russia leather, or of plum, which it exhales, has caused it to be called, in some places, the Plum-tree Beetle. [Illustration: Fig. 430.--Goliathus Druryi (natural size).] The _Gnorimus nobilis_ much resembles the rose beetle, and is found on elder flowers, the whiteness of which this golden insect relieves. One species, much smaller, only one or two lines long, is the _Valgus hemipterus_, which is often met with in spring, in the dust of the roads. The female has a long auger, which enables it to deposit its eggs in rotten wood. Dumeril has described at length the singular movements of this little insect:--The jerking and, as it were convulsive, movements by which it transports itself from one place to another; its tottering attitude, resulting from the excessive length of its hind legs; the vertical carriage of these, which, by their singular direction, interfere much with the walking, which is directed by the other legs. One should, above all, notice the artifice which the _Valgus_ employs, as indeed do many Coleoptera, to escape from his persecutors, by counterfeiting death. As soon as it is seized by any enemy, its members stiffen and become motionless. The body, abandoned to itself, lies unevenly on whatever side it falls, for its legs no longer bend; if you bend them over, they remain in the inclination given to them. Nothing then betrays life in this little dry and slender being, frozen with fear, and imitating death, without, perhaps, being aware itself of what it is doing. We must still further mention here the _Incas_--beautiful insects of the same group, which are met with in South America, and whose males have an extraordinary head. They fly during the day round the great trees on which they live. Fig. 431 represents the _Inca clathrata_.