A LONG-LIFED WOODBORING BEETLE. 



H. E. JAQUES 



Early iu April of 1917, Mrs. C. B. Doe, liviag in Mt. Pleasant, 

 Iowa, called the writer to her home to see what proved to be a 

 matured larva of a Cerambycid. This white larval form about 

 an inch in length, together with about 50 cc. of wood chewings, 

 had been shaken from a round hole just discovered in one of 

 the pieces of an imitation mahogany book case. 



The "monster" had already been viewed by others of the 

 community and the suggestions that had been made to preserS'C 

 the piece of furniture from ruin were as amusing as they were 

 unscientific. The larva was placed in a box. In about two weeks 

 it had pupated and in a few days more had emerged as a normal 

 specimen of Eburia quadrigemmata Say, 



It is interesting to note that while the food plants of this 

 species are given by Blatchley as Hickory, Ash, and Honey Lo- 

 cust, the piece, of the book case in which it had spent its growing 

 days was birch, "While the piece was less than an inch in thick- 

 ness, there was no indication of the borer reaching either surface 

 during its migrations except at the place of its fiual exit. 



The bookcase has been in the possession of Mrs. Doe and in 

 continued iLse for nineteen years. It came to its present owner 

 from the household effects of the mother-in-law. The original 

 owner, Mrs. Doe insists, owned the piece of furniture for about 

 twenty-five years. There seems to be no doubt that the figures 

 given for the age of the infested piece of wood are reliable. If 

 the egg was laid before the wood was worked up, as is believed, 

 the beetle in question must have been more than forty years 

 developing. 



Mr. J. McNeil writing in the American Naturalist, Volume 

 XX, p. 1055, tells of tw^o long horns, which strangely enough 

 were of this same species, emerging from an ash door-sill that 

 had been in place nineteen years. In that case the relation of 

 the tunnels to the solid brick wall on which the door-sill rested, 

 seems to have made it certain that the eggs must have been laid 

 in the wood before the house was built. 



Department op Biology, 

 Iowa Wesleyan College. 



