94 



Forty-first Report on the State Museum. 



The Beetle Abundant in a Dwelling-house. 



Examples of this beetle, i-epresented in enlarg-ement in Fig. 38, 

 occurred quite frequently in a dwelling-house in Albany, during the 

 month of March. Their distribution through different rooms on the 

 several floors where they had never been observed before, excited 

 curiosity as to their source. 



In reply to inquiry made for their name and some information 

 respecting them, answer was returned that they were a species of 

 Longicorn beetle, bearing the scientific designation of Xylotrechus 

 colonus, but which was not sufficiently common or of enough econ- 

 omic importance to have received a pojDular name. (Dr. Packard has 

 designated it as " the common oak Clytus," from the tree which it 

 more usually infests, and the genus to which it was formerly referred.) 

 It was, however, by no means rare in the State of New York, and it 

 not unfrequently fell into the collector's liand in his field excursions. 



Limited Knowledge of the Insect. 

 Little seems to have been written of its habits or life-history, beyond 

 the brief account given by Dr. Packard, viz.: The 

 larva excavates broad, shallow, and irregularly 

 sinuous burrows, about five mm. wide, at its broadest 

 part between the bark and wood of the oak, upward 

 and downward, and extending partly arou.ud the 

 trunk. The larvse, pupse, and imago may be found 

 in these burrows in the month of May and early 

 June. The newly transformed beetle has been taken 

 as early as the 27th of May. The beetle has also 

 been found under the bark of an old sugar maple in 

 the Adirondack Mountains, N. Y. The figure of the 

 larva given, is from Dr. Packard's "Descriptions of 

 the Larvse of Injurious Forest Insects," illustrated 

 in ten plates, contained in the 3d Report of the U. S. 

 Entomological Commission. 



Fig. 39.— Larva of 

 Xylotrechus col- 

 onus. 



How it May Have Been Introduced within Doors. 

 The species of the family to which it belongs {Ceramhycidce) are 

 seldom seen within doors, and no satisfactory reason can be assigned 

 for the presence of X. colonus in such numbers as reported in the pres- 

 ent instance. They may perhaps have been contained as larvse or 

 j)upse in maj^le or oak fuel, if such was used in the house, or in furni- 

 ture made of these woods, and their appearing in their final stage of 

 perfected beetles at so early a season, may have been the result of the 

 higher within-door temperature to which they had been subjected. 



