118 JOURNAL, BOMBAY NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY, Vol. XVI. 



often numerous abdominal ones (see fig. 39). The food is vegetable, some 

 species feeding in galls on plants, others in the interior of twigs, whilst 

 others again bore into and live in the hard wood of trees and shrubs. The 

 majority, however, live upon the leaves of plants. Those which live in 

 wood resemble coleopterous larva? in appearance, whilst the species 

 living and feeding upon leaves resemble the leaf-eating lepidopterous 

 caterpillars (see figs. 37a, and 39). 



Fam. I. Cephidse— Stem Saw-Flies. 



Slender Insects with a weak integument and slender antennae. The 

 female bears a saw at the end of her body. The larvee live in the stems 

 of plants or in the tender shoots of trees and shrubs. 



Little is known about these Insects in India. One. however, — an 

 undescribed species — has been found boring into the bases of the young 

 new needles of the deodar ( Cedrus deodara) in the spring. The needles 

 of this tree develop on the branches in small rosettes (fig. 36, c). If 

 these small spine-like leaves be examined when attacked by this minute 

 insect, they will be seen to have swollen up at their bases in such a 

 manner that the needles coalesce at the bottom as seen in e. A closer 

 examination shows that the swelling is convex on the outside, 

 concave on the inner one (fig. 36, d), and in this small concave 

 elliptical- depression a tiny orange yellow grub will be found. This 



Ik;, ;?<; — Cephus :' sp. a larva ; b imago ; '•, Deodar branch showiug effects of larval 

 attacks ; d, attacked needles with bases swollen up. a, and J, mucb en- 

 larged (N.-W. Himalayas), 

 is the larva of this small cephid and is shown in fig. 36o. The irritation 

 set up by its feeding operations causes the swelling at the base of the 



