THE CANA.D1AN ENTOMOLOGIST. 225 



NOTE ON CHALCOGRAPHA SCALARIS, LeConte. 



BY DR. H. A. HAGEN, CAMBRIDGE, MASS. 



1 may give an addition to my note (Jmie, No. 6, p. 120, 1884). Dm*- 

 ing the last seventeen years this beetle has never been rare in Cambridge, 

 Mass., but never so overwhelmingly common as this year. As this ele- 

 gant beetle was the first I had collected here in October, 1867, it had 

 become my pet, and I paid some attention to it every year. This year it 

 was very common on a long board fence in Ware St., which 1 have to pass 

 four times every day. The fence surrounds a large garden with many elm 

 trees near. When I heard that the beetle had been very destructive to 

 elm trees in some places on the north side of the College grounds, and 

 that it had nearly denuded some trees in Sommerville, I gave closer atten- 

 tion to it. Till J une the leaves of the elms in Ware St. were comparatively 

 uninjured. Then appeared the second brood of larvae, and very soon the 

 leaves were honeycombed with more or less round holes, and turned yellow 

 prematurely. The larvae were first described by Harris, Injur. Ins., 1841, 

 and the same repeated in all following editions ; the edition of 1862 gives 

 a figure of the larva and beetles. A new and fuller description of the 

 egg, larva and pupa is given by Dr. A. S. Packard, Insects Injurious to 

 Forest and Shade Trees, 1881, p. 126. Harris says. Injurious Insects, 

 1862, p. 133, these beetles inhabit the linden and the elm. A. Fitch, 

 Report v., p. 842, records them as injurious to the elm; common also 

 upon willows. Packard, 1881, observed them very abundant at Bruns- 

 wick, Maine. The numerous Imden trees in the campus of Bowdoin 

 College were infested to such a degree that nearly every tree, and in some 

 cases nearly every leaf of a tree, was infested by the grubs. Packard, in 

 Maine, had taken the beetle in coitu on the alder, where it is more com- 

 mon. I find no enemies mentioned, but I observed myself in August a 

 nymph of Podarcys spinosus, after Mr. Uhler's determination, running 

 after a young larva and spearing it dexterously through the anus. When 

 I took both in a small box, they separated directly, but in opening the 

 box ten minutes later, I found the larva again safely speared. The dis- 

 tribution of C. scalar is is very large ; the Museum contains the imago and 

 larva from the Saskatchewan River, Brit. Am., and from Lake Superior. 

 It goes down through the Eastern and Middle States to Louisiana and 

 Mexico, to Costa Rica (of Suffrian Slett. Ent. Zeit. 1858, p. 256). Wes- 

 terly, Rogers (Proc. Ac. N. S. Phil., vol. 8, p. 32) quotes Nebraska. 



