1885.] THE ENTOMOLOGIST. S77 



6 J in. of Wurteniberg measure, or 35 ft. 5 in. and 2 lines English, 

 which gives a diameter of 11 ft. 3 in. 8 lines. But it was deter- 

 mined from the tree of Morat, that for an old lime the average 

 annual increase was 1*8 8 5 lines, so that the age of this Neustadt 

 tree in 1831 would be 8G4 years. Now the town of Neustadt was 

 built in 1229, and consequently this tree would have been at that 

 time 262 years old. But if we assume its rate of growth, as in new 

 limes, at 2^ lines annually, it would have been only 7GG years old, 

 or 164 years old when the town was rebuilt; and this last tallies 

 better with historical documents, from which it appears to be 

 between seven and eight hundred years old. One or two other 

 large lime trees may yet be mentioned. One existed at Depenham 

 in Norfolk in the time of Evelyn, which was characterized in history 

 as the Tilia Colosscea Dcpcnhamcnsis. It was then {i.e. 1664) 25-g- 

 feet in circumference at the smallest part of the trunk about 6 feet 

 from the ground, and 48 feet at l| feet above the surface of the 

 ground ; it was 9 feet high. Calculating its age from the rate of 

 growth of 2-|- lines in diameter annually, it must have been about 

 530 years old at that time. There was also a gigantic one at the 

 Chateau de Chaillie, near Mclles, in France. In 1804 it measured 

 15 metres, or 49 ft. 2^ in. English in circumference, or 15 ft. 8 in. 

 in diameter ; if this measurement be not taken close to the ground, 

 and if we allow 2-J- lines as the annual increase, its age would be- 

 about 1063 years. The trunk, divided into six enormous branches, 

 required to be supported. 



(To be continued.^ 



The Entomologist. 



JOINT-WORMS DESTROYING WHEAT STALKS. 



LAST autumn, American farmers, specially those in the States of 

 Illinois, Michigan, and New York, found much of their wheat 

 straw infested with the larvte of a four-winged (Hymenopterous) fly. 



and creased and deformed in the fashion represented in Fig. 1, the 

 black dots on which show places of exit of the flies. 



