406 JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC ENTOMOLOGY [Vol. 10 



treatment gave promise of good results. One depended on a liberal scattering of 

 tobacco powder on the beds. This material is claimed to serve as a fertilizer in 

 addition to its repellent action on the maggots. The use of a trade preparation called 

 'Pyrox,' which was sprayed on several beds of plants, seemed to afford almost com- 

 plete protection to the growth. Where such applications had been made upon plants 

 at time of setting and later, the stock was not molested by maggots nor even cutworms, 

 and showed no sign of disease. Growers who adopted this course secured stands of 

 advanced stock. That the enemy was overcome by the above means is evidenced 

 by the absence of any further complaint, and a full tomato crop is therefore beUeved 

 to be assured." 



A BUPRESTID HOUSEHOLD INSECT (CHRYSOPHANA 

 PLACIDA LEG.) 



By H. E. Burke, Specialist in Forest Entomology, Branch of Forest Insects, Bureau 

 of Entomology, U. S. Department of Agriculture 



During the past year, this species, through a shght change in habit, 

 has become, locally at least, an injurious household insect. Normally 

 it lives in the wood of dead limbs, tops and scars on the trunks of living 

 trees. Fire scars and blazes are very often found to be infested in the 

 higher mountain regions of the Rocky Mountain and Pacific states. 

 The larvae mine the wood riddling it with the small worm holes which 

 are filled with the fine dustlike borings. In the average forest a good 

 deal of damage is done to the timber of the trunks of injured standing 

 trees. 



It is not such a long step from the wood of the standing tree to the 

 wood of window casings and door frames. This seems to be the first 

 case reported, however, where a Buprestid normally living under the 

 same conditions as Chrysophana has made the step. 



In the case under observation the frames of several windows in vari- 

 ous office buildings in Placerville, Cahf., were found to be riddled by 

 the mines of this species and adults were taken in the act of emerging 

 from the wood. One building was erected pver thirty years ago and 

 another over twenty so the casings evidently were infested long after 

 the buildings were erected. The work indicated that the wood had 

 been infested and reinfested several times and probably in a number 

 of cases the adults never left the room into which they had emerged but 

 mated and the females oviposited in the same casings or adjoining ones. 

 The casings appeared to be of sugar pine {Pinus lamhertiana Dough). 



That this species is quite adaptable in regard to host is also indicated 

 by the fact that it is a burrower in cones. During the past few years it 

 has been found several times in the cones of the knobcone pine {Pinus 

 attenuata Lemmon) . These cones remain on the tree a number of years 

 and are hard and dry, more like a branch than the average cone. 



The life-history of Chrysophana is very much like the life-history of 



