326 LIFE-HISTORIES OF AUSTRALIAN COLEOPTERA, 



out parallel chambers, but never breaking into each other's mine. 

 The dying foliage is noticeable early in January, their attacks 

 causing the limb to become swollen and covered with exudations 

 of gum. The beetles come forth in the first week in November; 

 I have never taken the beetle at large, but it is evidently common 

 on this shrub at certain seasons of the year, though ver}^ effectually 

 concealed in the dense prickly foliage. The beetle is 10 lines to 

 an inch in length, with very large prominent eyes and long slender 

 antennae; thorax* finely rugose, produced into a stout blunt spine 

 on either side; elytra rounded at the shoulders, of a uniform width 

 to the tips, which are round, not quite covering the tip of the 

 abdomen; the whole insect is of a uniform chestnut-brown, the 

 central portion of the wing covers being much lighter than the 

 edges, and the whole of them covered with close, fine, fawn- 

 coloured down. 



Hah. — The neighbourhood of Sydney. 



Strongylurus thoracicus, Hope. 



Larva dirty white, with rather large head, armed with stout 

 black jaws, broad at the tips; body short and corrugated. Dorsal 

 view: forehead large, flattened, projecting slightly in front, 

 creamy- white with a large blotch of bright yellow on either side, 

 covered with stout reddish hairs; thoracic segments narrower 

 than the head; first four abdominal segments bearing two corru- 

 gated lobes on the summit; the 5th, 6th and 7th with two rounded 

 tubercles divided in the centre; all the segments distinctly divided 

 from each other at the apical margins; the last two segments 

 rounded. Ventral view: thoracic segments much flattened, legs 

 very small, short and ferruginous, the margins of all the segments 

 fringed with fine hairs. 



The larvae attack the stems of the common garden Pittosj)orums 

 (/*. revolutum and P. undulatum) growing in sul^urban gardens. 

 In the neighbourhood of Croydon, where most of my specimens 

 were ol^tained, they completely disfigured a large shrub of the 

 former species, large branches three and four inches in diameter 

 being cut off; over a dozen of the lower limbs fell during last 



