FAMILY BUPRESTIDAE 201 



Beetle.— Oblong-oval, elongate ; brilliant green, with the suture golden ; under-surface 

 brilliant coppery with green reflexions. Head flat with big punctures. Prothorax deeply and 

 irregularly punctate, dense on sides. Elytra scarcely wider than 

 Description. thorax at base, slightly sinuate on anterior margins, and abruptly 



constricted from upper third ; obliquely truncate and two-spined at 

 apex ; set with longitudinal rows of deep punctures, between which are smaller ones formed 

 of small clusters of minute punctures, mostly irregularly spaced. Under-surface deeply rugose- 

 punctate, with thick patches of pubescence on lateral edges of abdominal segments. Legs 

 coppery, punctate. Length, 14 mm. to 23 mm. ; breadth, 4.5 mm. to 7 mm. 



Larva.— Elongate, white, with a small yellow head and an enlarged prothoracic segment. 

 Length, 30 mm. to 36 mm. 



In the Mandla forests of the Central Provinces on 13 April igog I 

 took numbers of the grubs of this buprestid feed- 

 Life History. ing in galleries in the bast and sapwood of a large 

 green Terminalia tomcntosa tree which had been felled 

 in the previous February. 



The grubs were accompanied by Sphaerotry pes globulus (p. 487) in parts of 

 the tree. The larvae were mostly full-grown, and many had already eaten 

 the pupating-chamber deeper down into the sapwood. The larval gallery 

 is long, irregular, and winds about at different angles ; it is broad, and packed 

 with wood-dust and excreta. The pupmting-chamber is eaten out parallel to 

 the long axis of the tree, and is connected with the larval gallery in the sap- 

 wood and bast by a short tunnel from half an inch to one inch in length. 



I subsequently took the larvae numerously in the felled sal-trees in the 

 Banjar Valley of this district. Large individuals of both species of trees had 

 been felled on the alignment of a new road running through these forests. 



The insect probably passes through the earlier part of the winter in its 

 pupating-chamber in the tree as a pupa, or nearly mature beetle, appearing 

 on the wing in February and ovipositing in the trees. This is borne out by 

 the fact that I took a dead fully mature beetle in a pupal chamber in the 

 sapwood of a tree felled the previous year, and a living beetle on the wing, 

 probably a belated individual of the February generation, both at the 

 beginning of April. The fact that the larvae were beginning to pupate in 

 the middle of April would seem to indicate that there may be a partial 

 second generation of the insect in the year. 



The operations of the grubs damage the tree by removing the bast 

 layer ; but the small tunnels and chambers made by them in the sap- 

 wood to pupate are of no importance unless the insect is extremely 

 numerous, when the entrance-holes would render the outer appearance of 

 the logs unsightly and probably lead to their rejection by a timber con- 

 tractor in the absence of definite knowledge that the tunnels do not 

 penetrate into the heart-wood. They do not do so, and the insect does 

 not therefore ruin the timber as is the case with the longicorn grub Hoplo- 

 ceramhyx spinicornis, which is found infesting the sal often in company 

 with the buprestid and scolytid {Sphacrotrypes) in this locality. 



The methods of protection described in detail later on under the 

 Hoploceramhyx (p. 331) apply equally to this insect. 



