86 INSECTS INJURIOUS TO VEGETATION. 



the tip, and by the great length of their antennae, belong to 

 the genus Stenocorvs, a name signifying narrow or straitened. 

 One of them, which is rare here, inhabits the hickory, in its 

 larva state forming long galleries in the trunk of this tree in 

 the direction of the fibres of the wood. This beetle is the 

 Stenocorus ( Cerasphorus) cinctus* or banded Stenocorus. It 

 is of a hazel color, with a tint of gray, arising from the short 

 hairs with which it is covered ; there is an oblique ochre-yellow 

 band across each wing-cover; and a short spine or thorn on 

 the middle of each side of the thorax. The antennse of the 

 males are more than twice the length of the body, which 

 measm-es from three quarters of an inch to one inch and one 

 quarter in length. 



The ground beneath black and white oaks is often observed 

 to be strewn with small branches, neatly severed from these 

 trees as if cut off" with a saw. Upon splitting open the cut 

 end of a branch, in the autumn or winter after it has fallen, it 

 will be found to be perforated to the extent of six or eight 

 inches in the course of the pith, and a slender grub, the author 

 of the mischief, will be discovered therein. In the spring this 

 grub is transformed to a pupa, and in June or July it is 

 changed to a beetle, and comes out of the branch. The his- 

 tory of this insect was first made public by Professor Peck,f 

 who called it the oak-pruner, or Stenocorus [Elaphidion) putator. 

 In its adult state it is a slender long-horned beetle, of a dull 

 brown color, sprinkled with gray spots, composed of very short 

 close hairs ; the antennae are longer than the body, in the 

 males, and equal to it in length in the other sex, and the third 

 and fourth joints are tipped with a small spine or thorn ; the 

 thorax is barrel-shaped, and not spined at the sides ; and the 

 scutel is yellowish white. It varies in length from four and a 

 half to six tenths of an inch. It lays its eggs in July. Each 

 egg is placed close to the axilla or joint of a leaf-stalk or of a 

 small twig, near the extremity of a branch. The grub hatched 

 from it penetrates at that spot to the pith, and then continues 



* Ceramhyx cinctus, Drury ; Stenocorus garganicus, Fabricius. 



t Massachusetts Agricultural Repository and Journal. Vol. V., Tvith. a plate. 



