ENTOMOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF ONTARIO. 



23 



(1) I remember standing in the chancel of a new church which I h\'\ built in the 

 township of Brome in 1864, and heirin^ from the flior a slight rasping sound, I watched 

 attentively, and presently the jaws and head of a Buprestis larva (Fig 5a and c, the 

 larva a^d head; b pupa, d beetle), appeared through a hole. I look -d around me and 

 saw that there was a row of holes wherever the flooring rested 

 upon a sleeper, and 1 found that the sleepers had been made of 

 small spruce and hemlock trees hewn a little on the upper side. 

 These trees weie the habitations of Buprestidte, the larvge of 

 which, having at this time attained their full growth, had 

 gnawed their way through an inch ot floor lining, and an inch 

 and a quarter of spruce boarding to the upper air, that they 

 might enter upon the pupal condition satisfied that a way of 

 exit had been secured for the coming imagoes. 



There is an insect, a longicorn beetle which, like the 

 " TirabermRn " of Scotland, finds its food and habitation in the 

 pine. It is Afonohammus Confusor Kirby (Fig. 6) It is a 

 dark gray, fquare-hipped insect, an inch and a quarter long, 



with antennae of twice that length. This creature often presents itself unexpectedly in 



strange quarters. One afternoon I was sitting in my study in the rectory at C )wansville, 



which was then a new building, when suddenly a strange object came down with a great 



clatter upon the book I was reading. It was M. confusor. " Where did you come 



from ^ " I said. I looked round and soon discovered a hole recently made in the casing 



of the door. What an experience that insect had 



gone through ! It had sprung from an egg laid in 



a crevice of a standing pine. The tree into which 



it had eaten its way had been cut down, hauled 



about in the woods, soaked in the mill pond, and 



cut up by the circular saw. The boards had been 



banged about in the piling, had been kiln-dried, 



and then passed through a planing-mwchine. That 



particular board in which the beetle had had its 



habitation had been worked by hand in " the sash 



and door factory;" had been planed and fi ted, 



and hammered and painted ; and yet — surviving 



all the rough usage, and escaping all the deadly 



weapons — there had lain M. confusor snugly en- 

 sconced in his square-inch, or so, of wood, reserv- 

 ing himself until he could present himself as a 



gentleman. (Fig. 6.) 



Another beetle closely related to M. confusor, and of similar habits is Monohammus 



■marmorator Kirby. It is somewhat smaller than M. con/usor, and has shorter antennae. 



In color it is brown, marbled with pale yellow. 



A third insect belonging to the same genus is Monohammus scufellatus Say, (Fig. 7). 



It is called by the French-Canadians, " Ze Forgeron" — the Blacksmith. It is deep 



bistre in hue, and has a white scutellum. During the 

 past season (1895) this insect has been unusually num- 

 ous and destructive. In the spring one of my neighbors 

 planted an extensive hedge of spruce around his grounds. 

 By the end of summer nearly every scion had been girdled 

 or partially so by the Forgeron. The larvae of the species 

 are even more destructive than the perfect beetles. I 

 have seen a fine, large, spruce tree snap off^, two feet from 

 the ground, under pressure from the wind, and, on exam- 

 ination, have found that the stem was tunnelled through 



and through — scores of the Scutellatus larvge having mined and countermined it in 



all directions. 



Fig. 6. 



rig. 7. 



