So our first real beetle of the week is this one. It is described as the Manuka Beetle and given the scientific name of the Pyrenata Festiva.
The text, which can be extremely blurry on some of these cards, tells us it is "A very common but beautiful cockchafer" and that the card shows it "four times life size".
According to my research, though this beetle is related to the rest of the cockchafer family, which is spread all over the world, this particular species only appears in New Zealand. I also read a curious reference that when wool was imported to England the beetles were found in it, but it left me hanging there, and I was eager to know whether the beetles were alive, and what they did with them, or if they did not survive in our climate. Or maybe they could only eat off the manuka tree? And yes, this is where the honey comes from.
This set appears in our original Wills Reference Book part 4 as :
277. 50 N.Z. BUTTERFLIES, MOTHS & BEETLES. Printed by letterpress in colour. Backs in grey, with descriptive text. New Zealand issue 1928.
There is no month of issue given there, and not in the modern Wills Combined when all the books were printed as one volume with the addition of a very useful table of issuing dates taken from the Wills Works Magazine.
Both our World Tobacco Issues Index sees the description reduced to : "Sm. Nd. (50)"