SCOLYTIDS AND OTHER COLEOPTERA 19 



SCOLYTIDS (INCLUDING HYLASTES CUNICU- 

 LARWS AND PITYOPHTHORUS RAMU- 

 LORUM) AND OTHER COLEOPTERA (IN- 

 CLUDING MET ABLE TUS TR UNCA TELL US) 

 TAKEN IN THE FORTH AREA. 



By William Evans, F.R.S.E. 



{Concluded from 19 16, page 308.) 



FOREMOST among the Anobiids is the common furniture 

 beetle or "death-watch," Anobium domesticum, Fourc, which 

 is still only too well known in many of the older houses 

 throughout the district. I have obtained it, or had it 

 reported from old chairs, chests, etc., in each of the three 

 Lothians, Fife, Stirling, South Perth, and Clackmannan ; 

 and in April last a colony was found in the open, in a fence- 

 post, at Kate's Mill, near Edinburgh. When staying at 

 Aberlady and other villages during the summer and autumn 

 months, I have often listened to their " ticking" during the 

 still hours of the night, and several times observed numbers 

 on the windows of the rooms in the daytime. The allied but 

 much larger Xestobium tessellatum, F., which occasionally 

 proves so destructive to the woodwork of churches and other 

 buildings in England, is credited to Forth in Sharp's Scottish 

 Catalogue, on what authority I do not know. So far, it has 

 never come under my notice. Priobinm castaneum, F., is 

 fairly common, and no doubt widely distributed in old 

 hawthorn hedges. In June 1900 I beat two off bushes on 

 a roadside near Ormiston, East Lothian ; and in April last, 

 both adults and larvae were taken from their galleries in 

 dead hawthorn stems, and in a dead beech, at Saltoun in the 

 same county. The species was also found last year in old 

 hedges at Comiston and Kate's Mill (Edinburgh), and 

 Gifford (Haddington). 



Fences made of unbarked larch and pine frequently yield 

 Ernobins mollis, L., in plenty. A number of years ago 

 (November 1896) the larvae were found in great abundance 

 in larch bark on a recently erected rustic bridge over the 



