240 



INSECT ARCHITECTURE. 



a miner of this order, extending in tortuous path- 

 ways, about a quarter of an inch broad, for several 

 feet and even yards in length. The excavation is 

 not circular, but a compressed oval, and crammed 

 throughout with a dark-coloured substance like saw- 

 dust — the excrement no doubt of the little miner, 

 who is thereby protected from the attacks of staphij- 

 linidce, and other predaceous insects, from behind. 

 But though we have found a great number of these 

 subcortical tracks, we have never discovered one of 

 the miners, though they are very probably the grubs 

 of the pretty musk-beetle {Cerambyx moschatns) 

 which is so abundant in the neighbourhood of the 

 trees in question, that the very air in summer is per- 

 fumed with their odour.* 



Another Capricorn beetle of this family is no less 

 destructive to bark in its perfect state, than the above 

 are when grubs, as, from its habit of eating round a 

 tree, it cuts the course of the returning sap, and de- 

 stroys it. 



Capricorn Bcttlt^ (Ccr.vnhyz Lamia ampuiator) rounding ^i^^^*! harh of a 

 tret. 



^ J. R. 



