on and
official encroachments, a course by which he made more enemies among the
colonists than he had ever made among the clergy. He died at Durban on
the 20th of June 1883. His daughter Frances Ellen Colenso (1840-1887)
published two books on the relations of the Zulus to the British (1880
and 1885), taking a pro-Zulu view; and an elder daughter, Harriette E.
Colenso (b. 1847), became prominent as an advocate of the natives in
opposition to their treatment by Natal, especially in the case of
Dinizulu in 1888-1889 and in 1908-1909.

See his _Life_ by Sir G. W. Cox (2 vols., London, 1888).

COLENSO, a village of Natal on the right or south bank of the Tugela
river, 16 m. by rail south by east of Ladysmith. It was the scene of an
action fought on the 15th of December 1899 between the British forces
under Sir Redvers Buller and the Boers, in which the former were
repulsed. (See LADYSMITH.)

COLEOPTERA, a term used in zoological classification for the true
beetles which form one of the best-marked and most natural of the orders
into which the class Hexapoda (or Insecta) has been divided. For the
relationship of the Coleoptera to other orders of insects see HEXAPODA.
The name (Gr. [Greek: koleos], a sheath, and [Greek: ptera], wings) was
first used by Aristotle, who noticed the firm protective sheaths,
serving as coverings for the hind-wings which alone are used for flight,
without recognizing their correspondence with the fore-wings of other
insects.

These firm fore-wings, or elytra (fig. 1, A), are usually convex above,
with straight hind margins (_dorsa_); when the elytra are closed, the
two hind margins come together along the mid-dorsal line of the body,
forming a _suture_. In many beetles the hind-wings are reduced to mere
vestiges useless for flight, or are altogether absent, and in such cases
the two elytra are often fused together at the suture; thus organs
originally intended for flight have been transformed into an armour-like
covering for the beetle's hind-body. In correlation with their heavy
build and the frequent loss of the power of flight, many beetles are
terrestrial rather than aerial in habit, though a large proportion of
the order can fly well.

Aristotle's term was adopted by Linnaeus (1758), and has been
universally used by zoologists. The identification of the elytra of
beetles with the fore-wings of other insects has indeed been questioned
(1880) by F. Meinert, who endeavoured to