PACKARD] INSECTS OF THE FOREST. 235 



pine borer {Monoliammus notatus), whose creaking noise 

 we often notice in passing by piles of white pine wood, and 

 sometimes hear issuing from some chair or table or chest of 

 drawers, in Avhich it has remained while they are passing 

 through the saw mill and carpenter's shop on their way to 

 the chamber or kitchen. Its mysterious creaking noise nat- 

 urally occasions a good deal of speculation as to its source. 

 One sometimes finds the beetle in sawn and planed lumber 

 lying in its cell, or it may issue from the leg of a table or 

 bureau drawer, with its long legs and horns like a ghost 

 from another world, when its advent causes nearly as much 

 of a flutter in the heart of the housekeeper as would the ap- 

 pearance of a veritable spirit. 



I have found these larvae in July in abundance, when they 

 were a little over an inch long, and had apparently com- 

 pleted their first year. I was unable to find any beetles or 

 ehr^^salides, and am disposed to think that they produced 

 the noise by rubbing their hard, smooth, horny heads or 

 jaws against the sides of their burrow. Dr. Fitch, however, 

 states that the beetle itself makes the noise, and it is evi- 

 dent that both larva and beetle produce a similar sound. I 

 will quote his statement entire. " On a still summer's night 

 the peculiar grating or crunching noise which the larvoe 

 make in gnawing the wood may be distinctly heard at a 

 distance of eight or ten rods. That the insect does not 

 open a passage out of the wood whereby to make its exit 

 until it attains its perfect state, I infer from tlie fact that 

 several of these l)eetles gnawed their way out of one of the 

 pillars of the portico of a newly built house in my neighbor- 

 hood, some years since, the noise being heard several days 

 before they emerged, and whilst tliey were still at some dis- 

 tance in the interior of the wood." 



The grub is nearly cylindrical, white and soft, with nu- 

 merous fine reddish hairs. The second segment of the body 

 is flattened and larger than the others ; the succeeding rings 



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