62 FIFTH REPORT OF THE ENTOMOLOGICAL COMMISSION. 



eggs are deposited in the interior of the bark, the outer layers of which 

 the ovipositor of the female penetrates." 



It has been claimed by Ratzeburg and also by Reifsig* that the 

 European larvae of Buprestis and the numerous allied genera, such as 

 Chrysobothris, Ohalcophora, etc., attain their full size in two years ; but 

 according to Perris the time required for their transformations is but a 

 single year, as may be seen by the extracts from his work further on. 



As regards the habits of the larvae we have no direct observations on 

 the young of this family in this country, though much needed in con- 

 nection with the use of remedial measures. 



Mr. E. Perris, in his invaluable work, entitled " Insectesdu Pin mari- 

 time," says of the larva of the European Ancylocheira flavomaculata : 



The larva of the A. flavomaculata lives in the wood of old piues recently dead, and 

 especially in the larger branches and the large twigs (pieux) . It is, indeed, under these 

 two last conditions that they oftenest occur. It does not stop in the bark, because it 

 is in the interior of the bark that the female lays its eggs, by means of its oviduct, 

 and after its birth it plunges into the wood to the depth of about a centimeter [nearly 

 two-fifths of an inch]. It follows the longitudinal fibers of the sap-wood while mak- 

 ing a gallery elliptical in section, which it leaves behind it completely tilled and packed 

 with excrement and detritus. When the time of its metamorphosis approaches it 

 goes towards the surface of the sap-wood, perforates it to the bark, sometimes makes 

 a small incision into the latter, stops up the gallery with a plug made entirely of 

 small, compacted chips; then it retires backward a little into a cell scooped out in 

 the wood, and this is where it transforms into a pupa. 



The following extract from Perris refers to the habits of Chrysobothris 

 8olieri, which also lives in the maritime pine in France. The habits of 

 our C dentipes of the oak, and G. femorata of the oak and different fruit 

 trees, and C. harrisii of the white pine are probably quite similar. 



According to my observations the Chrysobothris only lays its eggs on the trunks of 

 pines from five to fifteen centimeters in diameter at the base, and on the branches of 

 old trees. I have never found it on an old trunk, and when a large prostrate pine is 

 deprived of its branches it is on them that it lives, and not on the trunk. I have 

 already said that the larva lives at first under the bark; it there busies itself, some- 

 times attacking very plainly the sap-wood, sometimes boring a sinuous gallery, which 

 it leaves behiud it filled with white chips aud excrements of a brownish red ; but at 

 the approach of winter it burrows into the wood, where it gouges out a gallery ellip- 

 tical in section, the dimensions of which increase as its body grows larger. When 

 the moment of transformation has arrived it returns into its gallery, and undergoes 

 its metamorphosis sometimes more than two centimeters from the surface, because I 

 have found some pupie and perfect insects at this depth. 



Perris calls attention to the fact that though the Buprestid beetles 

 stand quite high in the Coleopterous series, yet their larvae have an 

 organization inferior to that of all other Coleopterous larvae known. 

 Thus, they have neither feet nor eyes, and there are no other Coleopte- 

 rous larvae which, as in the Buprestids, have very rudimentary labial 

 palpi, aud which consist of less than two joints. 



* Ratzeburg's Die Waldverderbniss, etc., ii, p. 360. 



