84 INSECTS OF MASSACHUSETTS. 



is found in most parts of that continent that have been much con- 

 nected with North America by navigation. It is somewhat re- 

 markable that Europe and America should have thus interchanged 

 the porter and violet Callidium, which, by means of shipping, have 

 now become common to the two continents. 



From the regularity of its form, and the noble size it attains, 

 the sugar maple is accounted one of the most beautiful of our 

 forest-trees, and is esteemed as one of the most valuable, on ac- 

 count of its many useful properties. This fine tree suffers much 

 from the attacks of borers, which in some cases produce its entire 

 destruction. We are indebted to the Rev. L. W. Leonard, of 

 Dublin, N. H., for the first account of the habits and transforma- 

 tions of these borers. In the summer of 1828, his attention was 

 called to some young maples, in Keene, which were in a lan- 

 guishing condition. He discovered the insect in its beetle state 

 under the loosened bark of one of the trees, and traced the recent 

 track of the larva three inches into the solid wood. In the course 

 of a few years, these trees, upon the cultivation of which much 

 care had been bestowed, were nearly destroyed by the borers. 

 The failure, from the same cause, of several other attempts to 

 raise the sugar maple, has since come to my knowledge. The 

 insects are changed to beetles and come out of the trunks of the 

 trees in July. In the vicinity of Boston, specimens have been 

 repeatedly taken, which were undoubtedly brought here in maple 

 logs from Maine. I regret that 1 have not been able to obtain a 

 larva of this insect for examination. The beetle was first de- 

 scribed in 1824, in the Appendix to Keating 's "Narrative of 

 Long's Expedition", by Mr. Say, who called it CUjtus spcciosus, 

 that is, the beautiful Clytus. It was afterwards inserted, and ac- 

 curately represented by the pencil of Lesueur, in Say's " Amer- 

 ican Entomology ", and, more recently, a description and figure of 

 it has appeared in Griffith's translation of Cuvier's " Animal 

 Kingdom", under the name of Clytus Hai/ii. The beautiful 

 Clytus, like the other beetles of the genus to which it belongs, is 

 distinguished from a Callidium by its more convex form, its more 

 nearly globular thorax, which is neither flattened nor indented, 

 and by its more slender thighs. The head is yellow, with the 

 antennae and the eyes reddish black ; the thorax is black, with two 



