52 



are smoky, but clearer than those of the female. His hind body is somewhat flattened, 

 rather widest behind, and ends with a conical horn. His hind legs are flattened, much 

 wider than those of the female, and of a blackish colour ; the other legs are rust-coloured, 

 and more or less shaded with black. The length of his body varies from three-quarters 

 of an inch to one inch and a quarter, and his wings expand from one inch and a quarter 

 to two inches or more. 



" An old elm tree in this vicinity (Cambridge, Mass.) used to be a favourite place of 

 resort for the Tremex coluniha, or Pigeon Tremex, and around it great numbers of the in- 

 sects were often collected, during the months of July and August and the early part of 

 September. Six or more females might frequently be seen at once upon it, employed in 

 boring the trunk and laying their eggs, while swarms of males hovered around them. 

 For fifteen years or more, some large buttonwood trees in Cambridge have been visited 

 by them in the same way. The female, when about to lay her eggs, draws her borer 

 out of its sheath, till it stands perpendicularly under the middle of the body, when .she 

 plunges it, by repeated wriggling motions through the bark into the wood. When the 

 hole is made deep enough she- then drops an egg therein, conducting it to the place by 

 means of the the two furrowed pieces of the sheath. The borer often pierces the bark 

 and wood to the depth of half an inch or more, and is sometimes driven in so tightly 

 that the insect cannot draw it out again, but remains fastened to the tree until she dies. 

 The eggs are oblong oval, pointed at each end, and rather less than one twentieth of an 

 inch in length. The larva, or grub, is yellowish white, of a cylindrical shape, rounded be- 

 hind, with a conical horny point on the upper part of the hinder extremity, and it grows 

 to the length of about an inch and a half It is often destroyed by the maggots of two 

 kinds of Ichneumon flies (Pimpla, atrata and Pimpla luimtor. Fabr.) These flies may 

 frequently be seen thrusting their slender borer, measuring from three to four inches in 

 length, into the trunks of trees inhabited by the grubs of the tremex, and by other wood- 

 eating insects ; and like the female tremex, they sometimes become fastened to the trees 

 and die without being able to withdraw their borers." 



In the Canadian Entomohgist, November 1868, Vincent Clementi reports the capture 

 in North Douro, Ontario, of several specimens of the Pigeon Termex ; they were taken 

 from an oak tree, which had been cut for cordwood, and were aU found to be females. 



The Sigalphus Curculio Parasite (SigalpMts ciireuUonis) Fitch. 



To those whose plum trees have been repeatedly ravaged by the Plum curculio and 

 whose eftbrts have only been slightly successful in preventing the wholesale destruction 

 of fruit, it will not be uninteresting to know that there are two known parasites of the 

 curculio of which the following descriptions and illustrations are taken from Riley's 

 Report, of 1870, for the State of IMissouri. 



" In 1860, in his address on the curculio delivered at the annual meeting of the N. 

 Y. State Agricultural Society, Dr. Fitch gave an account, accompanied with a figure, of a 

 small Ichneumon-fly which he named Sigalphus curculionis, and which he believed was 

 parasitic on the curculio. Before that time no parasite had been known to attack this pesti- 

 lent little weevil, and even to the present time (1870), it is currently believed that no 

 such parasite exists; for unfortunately the evidence given by Dr. Fitch was not sutticient 

 to satisfy some of our most eminent entomologists. These parasites were in fact received 

 by him from Mr. D. W. Beadle, of St. Catharines, C. W., who had bred them from black- 

 kjaot, from which he bred at the same time a certain number of curculios; but as other 

 worms besides those of the curculio are likewise found in black-knot, we had no absolute 

 proof that this flj' was parasitic on the insect in question ; consequently we find that Mr. 

 Walsh, in his report as acting State Entomologist of Illinois rather ridicules the idea of 

 its being a curculio parasite and endeavours to show that it is parasitic instead on the 

 larva of his plum-moth (Semasia prunivora). But I have this year not only proved that 

 poor Walsh was himself wrong in tliis particular inference, but that he was eipially wrong 

 in supposing his little plum-moth, so called, to be confined to plums ; for I have bred it 

 from galls (Qwrcus frmdosa, Bassett), from haws, from crab-apples and abundantly fioni 

 apples. 



