260 dtnastinjE. 



Lamellicorn subfamilies, the male and female sometimes collaborate 

 in the construction and provisioning of a nest for their young. In 

 the 'Entomological News,' 1908, p. 286, Mr. A. "H. Manee 

 describes his observations in North Carolina of Straiegus antceus, 

 one of the species in which the male bears strong horns upon the 

 thorax, surrounding a deep cavity. The beetles were found 

 ■working in pairs in the neighbourhood of fallen oak-leaves 

 accumulated in hollows by the wind. A shaft an inch in diameter 

 was first excavated by them vertically in the ground to a depth of 

 six or eight inches, the dug out earth forming a mound at the top. 

 From the foot of the shaft a horizontal chamber of rather larger 

 diameter is driven from one to five inches and this is packed with 

 dead leaves reduced to a fragmentary state, and a single egg is 

 placed in the middle of the mass. Sometimes two, and rarely 

 three, such horizontal galleries were found, each containing a 

 sin"-le egg. The egg is white and at first three thirty-seconds of 

 an inch in length and oblong, but in three or four days it has 

 swollen to a globular shape and is an eighth of an inch in diameter. 

 Mr. Manee believes that, having devoured the leaves stored up by 

 the parent-beetles, the grubs feed upon oak-roots. 



Various DtnastiNjE are injurious to pasture-land by feeding 

 upon the roots of grasses, and several species of the Heteronycliiis- 

 group have been found to destroy the roots of the sugar-cane. 

 The common Indian Phyllognathus dionysius has been found by 

 Mr. H. Maxwell Lefroy to feed upon the roots of rice. The 

 development is exceedingly rapid, the larval stage lasting only three 

 months, a short duration which lias probably been brought about 

 as an adaptation to the short life of the rice crop and the 

 alternating periods of fertility and aridity of the hot plains in 

 which it is cultivated. 



Oryctes rhinoceros is a serious pest in cocoanut plantations, 

 destroying the fibrous tissues at the base of the leaves and 

 admitting the rain and starting decay in the growing tops of the 

 palms. Tliis species has been carefully studied by Mr. C. S. 

 Banks and described in the Philippine Journal of Science for 

 1906. It is not dependent upon living food, however, being also 

 found in vegetable debris, and even flourishing in ordinary soil 

 containing only an average proportion of organic matter. Oryctes 

 nasicor7iis is constantly found in the refuse-heaps of tanneries, 

 where the larvte feed upon the decomposed bark. It also occurs 

 in Southern Europe in garden rubbish. 



Table of the Genera. 



1 (8) Basal joint of the hind tarsus similar to 



those succeeding. 



2 (7) Legs of the male elongate. 



3 (4) Elytra coriaceous iu both sexes : male [p. 262. 



bearing a single thoracic horn Xylotiutks, 



