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



blue, green, and rich chestnut, the wings having a coppery sheen on 

 them. The female is a deep metallic gieen on its upper surface. The 

 grub is stout, thick, canary yellow in colour and about 1^ inches in 

 length. The pupa is unenclosed in any cocoon, being pale yellow in 

 colour. (See fig. 37, a, d, c.) 



The female lays her eggs in the wood of dead spruce (Picea morinda, 

 Link.) in the North-West Himalayas, drilling holes into the tree by means 

 of the auger and drilling apparatus at the end of her body. The larvae 

 on hatching out bore winding galleries in the wood (see fig. 38), these 

 galleries having no apparent definite direction. The grubs evidently 



spend more than a year thus boring in 

 wood, larvae of various sizes being obtain- 

 able at any time. The tunnels made are 

 tightly packed with the wood sawdust pass- 

 ed through the body of the boring larvae. 

 When full fed the grubs change to pupae at 

 the end of their tunnels with no special 

 preparation, and the pupa is thus found 

 lying naked at the end of the boring, occu- 

 pying the only free space unblocked with 

 wood refuse in the gallery. The larvae 

 pupate about June, and fully developed 

 adults emerge in July. When ready to 

 leave the tree the mature sirex bores its 

 way out by a circular boring, an eighth of 

 an inch in diameter, drilled in the wood by 

 means of its powerful mandibles, and it in- 

 variably chooses the shortest route to the 

 outside, the gallery having, however, usual- 

 ly a slight upward direction.* July is 

 given as the month during which the Insect 

 Fig, 38.— Block of Spruce wood nas Deen observed to issue at elevations of 

 showing galleries between 6,000 and 7,000 ft. in the North- 

 made by larvae of -rxr , -rj- i Ti. • i 



. . 7 . West Jriimalavas. It is, however, an un- 

 birex wipertalts. " 



(N.-W. Himalayas.) doubted fact that on occasions the Insect 



• Vide a note on the habits of the larvre and adults of Sirex and Thalessa by 

 the Author in Nature of August 21st, 1902. 



