82 THE ENTOMOLOCrST's RECORD. 



laria and that of T. hiundularia, and another three or four weeks 

 between the latter and the second brood of T. crepusculcuia in any 

 given year. There is also the particular and not uncommon phase to 

 be considered Avhen a continuation of low temperature may prolong 

 the emergence of either species over a considerable period of the same 

 year. 



Connected with this question of date is another matter, viz., the 

 occurrence of partial third broods of T. crejmscularia. Some fifteen 

 years ago, Mr. Ovenden and myself bred several of the stunted little 

 creatures, which are the usual result of this brood. These are of the 

 ordinary type of the second brood of this species. Mr. E. W. H. Blagg 

 records an individual of this brood {Kntom., xix., p. 303) ; Dr. Riding 

 records another {Ent. Fwc, viii., p. 189). I dare say it is not un- 

 common in confinement, although the records are few. Probably, too, 

 it occurs occasionally in a state of nature. 



fTo be concluded). 



Notes on Coleoptera. 



Beetles that destroy forests (the ScolytiDje). 

 By CLAUDE MORLEY. F.E.S. 



While travelling through Suffolk by rail the other day, and noting 

 the exquisite autumnal tints of that beautifully wooded county, and 

 here and there its darker patches of fir coppice, the latter insensibly 

 carried my thoughts further north, to where one finds mile upon 

 mile of this darker foliage, not, however, in patches, but in 

 great continuous woods, in which one might wander about for a week 

 without coming across any sign of civilisation — woods in which the 

 ordinary tourist would see nothing but hosts of brown trunks and 

 green needles, but which would, to the entomologist, be eloquent 

 with soundless voices, every trunk and every spine have its own 

 particular tenant, and the very ground upon which he trod be securely 

 hiding, from molestation and the inclemencies of the weather, its 

 own particular fauna. A few facts about this insect fauna of the 

 forest may, perhaps, be of interest, especially since it appears to be 

 known only to the few that vast and valuable tracts of timbered land 

 are annually laid waste, and thousands of pounds lost, by the ravages 

 of beetles, which, to the uninitiated, would appear among the most 

 insignificant of created beings, ranging as they do in England from 

 three-quarters to three and three-quarters of a line in length. 



We will take, as probably the best known example of the "Borers " 

 in England, Hyhiniem piniperda, a little, black, rugose, almost 

 cylindrical fellow of two lines long, and his life-history may be taken 

 as a fair example of that of the Sculi/tidcw, though some are double- 

 brooded, which, of course, necessitates greater rapidity of metamor- 

 phoses, and a shorter span of life for the perfect insect than is enjoyed 

 by H. piniperda. The pines are almost invariably felled in or about 

 March, that being the time when the wood is at its best, and conse- 

 quently, if the weather be open, the beetles will begin to emerge from 

 their winter quarters and " swarm " about the prostrate trunks, upon 

 which they alight and immediately commence to bore their little 

 circular holes, much in the same way as do the the larvffi of Cassvs, or 

 those of the Sedidae, always first getting in as far as possible beneath 

 the bark, so that in old trees, upon which the bark has become gnarled 



