Crossword-Solution: ELATERS 7 letters, 21 clues 🏆 scrabble score: 7

Canby remarks (‘Gardener’s Monthly,’ August 1868), “as a general thing beetles and insects of that kind, though always killed, seem to be too hard-shelled to serve as food, and after a short time are rejected.” I am surprised at this statement, at least with respect to such beetles as elaters, for the five which I examined were in an extremely fragile and empty condition, as if all their internal parts had been partially digested.

Already on a sandy beach outside, we had caught sight of unmistakable coconut trees; some of them, however, dying, dead, even snapped short off, either by the force of the hurricane, or by the ravages of the beetle, which seems minded of late years to exterminate the coconut throughout the West Indies; belonging, we are told, to the Elaters--fire-fly, or skipjack beetles.

Some of these become spore-mother-cells and give rise by cell division to four spores, while others remain undivided and become the elaters.

The sporogonium even in the simplest forms has a sterile foot, but in this series also the origin of elaters from sterile cells can be traced.

The elaters serve as lines of conduction of plastic material to the developing spores, and later usually assist in their dispersal.