228 Forty-second Report on the State Museum. [86] 



August 17, 1882, has been rewritten and extended in the present notice, 

 in consideration of the particular interest attending the insect. 



I send by mail to-day a box containing several specimens of a hideous 

 and most oliensive beetle which has recently begun its ravages in the 

 ash trees on my lawn. Will you please tell me its name and character, 

 and how to free our trees from its presence. The odor from these 

 beetles is so offensive at night that it is disagreeable to sit in the open 

 air. I learn that they also occur on the forest trees in our vicinity. 



The beetle is the Dynastes Tityus of Linnseus, known under the 

 l^opular names of " the spotted-horn-bug " and the " rhinoceros 

 beetle " — each having reference to the large horns with which the 

 male is armed — these horns being, as in many other species of Gole- 

 optera, as notably in " the stag-beetle," a sexual feature. 



An Odorous Insect. 



The family of Scarabceidce, to which this beetle belongs, contains 

 many species which are noted for the disagreeable odor that they 

 emit, but none have the penetration and pungency of this. Where a 

 large number are congregated, the atmosphere in their vicinity 

 would readily become quite unpleasant to the nostrils, for even the 

 dead -bodies of the half-dozen sent me, although occupying a place, as 

 I am writing, upon an open piazza at a distance of several yards from 

 me, and after having been exposed to the air thi'oughout the night, 

 have rendered their vicinity quite intolerable to some of the unscien- 

 tific members of my family who have been sitting with me. 



The remarkable offensiveness of this insect has often been commented 

 on. Among other notices of it are the following: 



Mr. J. B. Smith, in a paper read before the Entomological Society of 

 Washington, September 2, 1886, on the peculiar odor emitted by these 

 beetles, stated that they had during the season develoj)ed into a veri- 

 table pest. In two States, Virginia and Tennessee, they had been 

 locally so abundant as to saturate the air with the penetrating stench. 

 The local boards of health, especially that at Memphis, Tenn., disin- 

 fected all sorts of foul and suspected localities without success, and 

 only by accident was the true source of the smell at last discovered. 



Prof. G. F. Atkinson, Entomologist of the Agricultural Experiment 

 Station of South Carolina, states in Bulletin No. 4 of the station for 

 January 4, 1889: "In the summer of 1886 the beetle was so plentiful, 

 feeding on the leaves of the ash in Raleigh, N. C, as to cause a dis- 

 agreeable odor, which pervaded nearly the whole city. For some time 

 it was thought to be due to uncleanliness in certain parts of the city, 

 but was eventually traced to these beetles." 



