Caulotrupis Lacertosus

Thomas Vernon Wollaston published this drawing in his book ‘Insecta Maderensia’ in 1854. In the book he thanks Westwood for providing the illustrations, ‘Particularly, however, would I draw attention to the valuable help which I have received from J. O. Westwood, Esq., whose pencil has been so elaborately employed in the figures which I am thus enabled to attach, and by whom many of the minutest of the dissections were accomplished, — with a degree of delicacy, moreover, to which I did not myself at the commencement of this Work (though I have since succeeded in anatomizing the larger portion of them, likewise) lay claim.’

234. Caulotrupis lacertosus, Woll. (Tab. VI. fig. 6.). Wollaston wrote the following about this species:

‘A very distinct and well-marked species [...] The only two examples which have hitherto come beneath my observation were captured by myself, during the autumn of 1847, from the interior of rotten wood, in company with the Rhyncolus tenax, at the Curral das Romeiras near Funchal. It was extremely sluggish in its movements, —so much so indeed that it was with difficulty that it could be made to crawl at all, when extracted out of its burrows.’