STATE AGRICULTUEAL SOCIETY, 



439 



HICKORY trunk: . 



wood? or does she bore through 

 these layers with her ovipositor 

 and place her egg under the 

 bark and upon the outer sur- 

 face of the wood? The Apple- 

 tree borer deposits her egg 

 upon the outside of the bark, 

 according to the observations 

 of Esq. Baldwin, as related in 

 my first report (Transactions^ 

 1854, pp. 717,718). But ac- 

 cording to the statements of 

 my esteemed fellow townsman, 

 Wm. McKie, Esq., who has 

 had the misfortune of having 

 much experience with this in- 

 sect, the results of which were 

 communicated by him to the 

 Horticulturist, published at 

 Rochester, a few years since, the parent insect pierces through 

 the bark and places her egg in contact with the wood. It 

 is probably impossible to decide from an inspection of the per- 

 foration in the bark, whether it has been made by a minute worm 

 wliich has gnawed its way through the bark, or has been pierced 

 by the boring apparatus of the parent insect. It is only by see- 

 ing the eg^ in place before it is hatched, or by finding the infan- 

 tile worm on its way through the bark that this point can be 

 settled. The young worm lives at first upon the soft outer layers 

 of the sap wood, nihiing a shallow cavity all around the orifice 

 in the bark, and the bark dies and turns black as far as this bur- 

 row extends. Its jaws having at length become sufficiently strong, 

 it gnaws its way into the solid wcx)d from the upper part of its 

 burrow under the bark, boring obliquely inward and upward, all 

 the lower part of its burrow being commonly packed with its saw- 

 dust-like chips. Finally, having completed its growth, it extends 

 the upper end of its burrow outward again to the bark, as shown 

 in the cut heretofore given. Transactions, 1854, p. 851, which cut 

 illustrates, on a diminished scale, the exit of this insect from the 



