Page:The Book of the Aquarium and Water Cabinet.djvu/147

Rh The hydrous piceus is here represented of the natural size; the ground colour is black, with a shade of bronze, and the margins of the elytra are tinged with green and purple. Each wing case is marked with dotted lines, the breast is dingy yellow, and the antennæ and organs of the mouth dull red. The legs are black, and the hairs which fringe the tarsi reddish brown.

, of several species, maybe obtained in plenty from clear brooks in every part of the country.

These are elegantly-formed and lively beetles; their elytra, legs, thorax, head, and breast of the same jet-black hue, and highly burnished, though, when immersed, the breast and abdomen glisten with an intensely metallic silvery lustre, owing to the film of atmospheric air which the beetle obtains from the surface, and which adheres to the hairy covering of the abdomen. This silvery species is here represented in its natural size. They are comparatively harmless, though I have just witnessed the demise