THE TENTHREDO LUC DRUM. 1 79 



and attains the length of an inch without reckoning the ovipositor, 

 which is half an inch long. This long instrument is used to 

 perforate the bark of fir trees, and the larva finds itself in the 

 midst of its food. 



The genus contains species that have been called by the 

 name of Urocera ; and they have, of late years, excited no 

 small astonishment in the minds of many military men, for some 

 of these insects took a fancy to eat lead and gnaw bullets. Mar- 

 shal Vaillant, a Russian colonel, ]\I. Motschulsky, and the director 

 of the museum at Vienna, M. Kollar, have asserted and proved 

 that the leaden bullets made for the French army during the 

 Crimean war were riddled by Sirex jiroencus. These insects 

 certainly got out of the boxes, in the wood of which — green 

 when they were made — the larvs were included ; and they were 

 found in the middle of the bullets, gnawing away, and perforating 

 the lead with their strong mandibles. 



Oryssiis coronatiis is one of the SiricidcB, and the female has 

 a thin saw, which is folded underneath the abdomen ; but, unfor- 

 tunately, its metamorphoses are unknown. 



There is a remarkable saw-fly {TentJiredo Ljicorinii) which lays 

 its eggs in the hawthorn trees soon after they have pushed forth 

 their tenderest leaves. It is a large fly, and is of a dusky-brown 

 colour, and about the size of a wasp. The female has a small and 

 very thin laying apparatus, and she chooses the upper surface of a 

 leaf, and pokes the edge of the ovipositor just under the cuticle ; she 

 then moves the saws gently, and expands them, moving them side- 

 ways. As the saws are drawn out of this most delicate wound, an 

 &g^ is left in their place, and gummed in by a viscid secretion. The 

 female lays several eggs, and they are pale and small. After a 

 while, the leaf grows, and is well nourished with the juices of the 

 plant ; and the eggs grow also, being close to the respiratory organs ■ 

 of the leaf, and in the midst of the nutritious fluids. The larva 

 can be seen in the Qgg, curled up, and turning over and over, 

 after the manner of all embryos. It is hatched after a while, and 

 it crawls upon and devours the leaf The thorns suffer a great 

 deal from it, and were it not for a fellow hymenopterous insect 

 that lays its eggs in the larva, they would have much more 

 damage done to them. When the larva has attained its full 



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