COLEOPTERA. 81 



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

 iStenocoius, a name signifying narrow or straitened. One of 

 them, which is rare here, inhabits the hickory, in its larva stale 

 forming long galleries in the trunk of this tree in the direction 

 of the fibres of the wood. This beetle is the Stcnocorus [Ceras- 

 phorus) clnctus*, 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 antennae of the males are more than twice the 

 length of the body, which measures 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 dis- 

 covered 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 history of this insect was first made public by Pro- 

 fessor Peckf, who called it the oak-pruner, or Stcnocorus (Ela- 

 yhidion) putator. In its adult slate 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 pene- 

 trates at that spot to the pith, and then continues its course 

 towards the body of the tree, devouring the pith, and thereby 

 forming a cylindrical burrow, several inches in length, in the centre 



* Ccramhyx cinctus, Drury ; Stenocorus gar ganicus, Fabiicius. 



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



11 



