424 INSECTS INJURIOUS TO VEGETATION. 



the cause and not the consequence of the decay of the trees 

 wherein they live. It is stated in the London " Zoological 

 Journal," that two hundred Scotch firs have been destroyed by 

 the Urocerus Juvencus, in the woods of Henham Hall, the seat 

 of the Earl of Stanhope, their trunks being bored through and 

 through by the grubs of this insect. Mr. Westwood relates* 

 that a piece of wood, twenty feet in length, from a fir-tree in 

 Bewdley Forest, Worcestershire, England, was found to be 

 so intersected by the burrows of these grubs, as to be fit for 

 nothing but firewood; and that the winged insects continued 

 to come out of it, at the rate of five, six, or more each day, 

 for the space of several weeks. Mr. Marsham states, on the 

 authority of Sir Joseph Banks, that several specimens of Uro- 

 cerus g-ig^as were seen to come out of the floor of a nursery in 

 a gentleman's house, to the no small alarm and discomfiture 

 of both nurse and children. The grubs must therefore have 

 existed in the boards or timbers before they were employed in 

 building, and these materials would not have been used if in a 

 decayed state. The sexes of most of these insects differ con- 

 siderably in size and color, and in the shape of their body and 

 of their hind legs. There are not many different kinds, but 

 they are very prolific, and abound in mountainous districts, 

 and in temperate climates, where forests of pines and firs pre- 

 vail. A new order was proposed for their reception by Mr. 

 Macleay, and was named Bomboptera, on account of the hum- 

 ming sound that they make in flying. Their young partake of 

 the nature of the Avood-eating grubs of the Capricorn beetles, 

 which therefore they may be said to represent, as the saw-flies 

 do some of the leaf-eating insects of the same order. 



Eight of the Urocbrid^ are enumerated in my " Catalogue 

 of the Insects of Massachusetts," including two kinds of 

 Xiphydria, which are now known to belong to the same 

 family. 



In the autumn of 1826, Major E. M. Bartlett, of North- 

 ampton, " found, on the body of one of his almost lifeless 

 pear-trees, a dead insect, about one inch and a half long, at- 



* "Introduction to the Modern Classification of Insects," Vol. II., p. 118. 



