HYMENOrTERA. 389 



may be said to represent, as the saw-flies do some of the leaf- 

 eating insects of the same order. 



Eight of the Urocerid^e are enumerated in my "Catalogue 

 of the Insects of Massachusetts," including two kinds of Xiphy- 

 dria, which are now known to belong- to the same family. 



In the autumn of 1826, Major E. M. Bartlett, of Northamp- 

 ton, "found, on the body of one of his almost lifeless pear-trees, 

 a dead insect, about one inch and a half long, attached to the 

 tree by its awl or borer, of about the same length, near an inch 

 of which was fast in the hard wood ; and there were several deep 

 punctures near it, evidently made by the same instrument, and in 

 some of them eggs were deposited." Not long afterwards Major 

 Bartlett found that the body of this tree, two or three feet from 

 the ground, was pierced with many small holes, to the depth of 

 an inch or more, and, in these holes, there were great numbers of 

 larvae, about one sixth of an inch in length, which he supposed 

 were hatched from the eggs seen there before ; and he came to 

 the conclusion that the tree was "destroyed by the deadly nee- 

 dles of the winged insect" above mentioned.* The latter was 

 subsequently sent to me for examination, and enabled me to fur- 

 nish an account of it, which, with a description of the male insect, 

 was published in January, 1827, in the fifth volume of the " New 

 England Farmer." The insect proved to be the Sirex Columba 

 of Linnaeus, or Treniex Columba of modern naturalists. Si7'ex is 

 a corruption of the Greek name for a wild bee ; Trcmex signifies 

 a perforator, or maker of holes ; and Columba a pigeon. The 

 body of the female is cylindrical, about as thick as a common 

 lead-pencil, and an inch and a half, or more, in length, exclusive 

 of the borer, which is an inch long, and projects three eighths of 

 an inch beyond the end of the body. The latter rounds up- 

 wards, like the stem of a boat, and is armed with a point or short 

 horn. The head and the thorax are rust-colored, varied with 

 black. The abdomen, or hinder and longest part of the body, 

 is black, with seven ochre-yellow bands across the back, all of 

 them but the first two interrupted in the middle. The horned 

 tail, and a round spot before it, impressed as if with a seal, are 



* See " New England Farmer/' Vol. V., pages 167, 175, 18G, and 211. 



