The Males
Are Larger, And Have The Rostrum Dilated At The End, And
Sometimes Terminating In A Good-Sized Pair Of Jaws.
I once saw
two males fighting together; each had a fore-leg laid across the
neck of the other, and the rostrum bent quite in an attitude of
defiance, and looking most ridiculous.
Another time, two were
fighting for a female, who stood close by busy at her boring.
They pushed at each other with their rostra, and clawed and
thumped, apparently in the greatest rage, although their coats of
mail must have saved both from injury. The small one, however,
soon ran away, acknowledging himself vanquished. In most
Coleoptera the female is larger than the male, and it is
therefore interesting, as bearing on the question of sexual
selection, that in this case, as in the stag-beetles where the
males fight together, they should be not only better armed, but
also much larger than the females. Just as we were going away, a
handsome tree, allied to Erythrina, was in blossom, showing its
masses of large crimson flowers scattered here and there about
the forest. Could it have been seen from an elevation, it would
have had a fine effect; from below I could only catch sight of
masses of gorgeous colour in clusters and festoons overhead,
about which flocks of blue and orange lories were fluttering and
screaming.
A good many people died at Dobbo this season; I believe about
twenty. They were buried in a little grove of Casuarinas behind
my house.
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