148 HICKORY. TRUNK TIGER CERAMBYX. ITS BURROW. 



mit. And when the beetle hatches from its pupa, it tears awsy 

 the fine powder above it, as it crawls forward, which powder 

 thus falls down upon the cushion of woody fibres, where we 

 meet with it in the evacuated cells — and breaking through the 

 bark, it emerges from the tree. 



What is here described seems to be the common habit of most 

 kinds of our timber borers. They complete their burrow by 

 gnawing a passage out to the bark, and then retire backwards a 

 short distance and stuff this upper extremity of the burrow with 

 their castings, that birds, especially the woodpecker, may not be 

 able to detect, by its hollowness, the hole which they have here 

 formed under the bark. But this artifice is not always successful. 

 Mr. P. Eeid informs me that he once observed in the trunk of a 

 sapling, a funnel shaped opening which had been dug by a wood- 

 pecker, some two inches in depth, at the bottom of which, incased 

 in the wood, was the shell-like relics of a pupa which the bird 

 had devoured, and below was the track by which the worm had 

 come upwards in the wood to this point. At first he was exces- 

 sively puzzled to account for this phenomenon — by what instinct 

 or other faculty it was possible for a bird to discover a worm 

 which was buried two inches deep in the wood, so as to be able 

 to bore directly inwards to the exact point where it was lying — 

 until it occurred to him that the worm had itself made an open- 

 ing outwards to the bark, by which to effect its escape after its 

 changes were completed, and had then retreated backwards into- 

 the wood again; and the woodpecker by tapping upon the bark 

 had ascertained that there was a cavity beneath, and immediately 

 thereupon opened and enlarged this cavity sufficiently to enable 

 him to reach the insect. What curious habits, what astonishing 

 instances of foresight and intelligence do we daily meet with in 

 studying the works of nature, all concurring to show that these 

 myriads of creatures, each furnished with its peculiar organs, 

 and endowed with such marvellous faculties and instincts, could 

 have been formed no otherwise than by a Creator who is infinite 

 in his attributes. 



