286 ENTOMOLOGICAL NEWS. [June, '08 



Some Observations at Southern Pines, N. Carolina 



By ABRAM HERBERT MANEE, A. M. 

 Strategus antaeus. 



In these sand hills, where the long-leaf pines denude the 

 ground of all but their own litter; in these black-jack barrens, 

 where the many spaces bare among the tufts of wiry grass 

 gleam white in vivid harmony with black and yellow ; here, 

 where neither stones nor gravel hinder plunge of trowel, there 

 is free field for study, and in the World of the Little the toilers 

 in the soil incite to special interest. 



My first antaeus, picked up in winter, were charred by 

 ground fires. In summer, '05, came my first polished males. 

 On the night of July n, '06, I took my first females by elec- 

 tric light. That same month we investigated an inch hole by 

 a cart path and dug out a working male. July 26 I took my 

 first pair from between two exposed roots of a large oak. They 

 were pulverizing the surface soil, preparatory to shaft dig- 

 ging. After several such takings of pairs and singles, I came 

 to know the peculiar mound of earth always pulverized to a 

 depth of one to three inches. August 3d I dug beneath an old 

 mound and found an egg. August 9th and i4th several more 

 eggs, and I note as follows : 



Beneath the mound of loosened soil an inch shaft extends 

 vertically for six or eight inches. At bottom of shaft a one- 

 and-a-quarter inch chamber reaches horizontally from one to 

 five inches, and in this chamber, packed with finely broken 

 bits of decadent oak leaves, a solitary egg is deposited. Some- 

 times two or rarely three such chambers diverge from the 

 same shaft, but I believe with never more than one egg in 

 each. A favorite haunt for nesting is by a pile of dead oak 

 leaves wind blown in some hollow, from which I conclude 

 that the young larva feeds on leaf debris and later on decadent 

 oak roots. 



The newly laid egg is oblong and white, in length fully three- 

 thirty-seconds of an inch. In three or four days the egg 

 swells to globular and is fully one-eighth inch in diameter. 



