OAK-BORERS. 81 



they mined the bark and scored the wood in directions radiating on one 

 side of the place of oviposition ; in one case a mine went directly across 

 the one next to it. The specimen figured was found at Salem, Mass. 



Beetle. — Of the form indicated by the figure ; prothorax square, augulated on each 

 side in front, with a short spine on each wing-cover, with eleven well-marked ridges. 

 Color, dark brown, with paler, stiff, short, hirsuties. Base and tips of femora and rest 

 of the legs, including the antenna3, pitchy reddish. Length, 6 to 8""'". 



22. The silky timber-beetle. 



Lymexylon aericeum (Harris). 



Order Coleoptera ; Family Lymexylid^. 



Boring small long cylindrical burrows in the wood of the oak, probably, and other 

 trees; a slender, odd-looking worm, with six legs placed on its breast, a prominent 

 hump upon its neck, and a leaf-like fleshy appendage at the end of its back ; chang- 

 ing into a long, narrow chestnut-brown beetle, 0.50 long, bearded with short, shining, 

 yellowish hairs, giving it a silky luster; its eyes large and almost meeting together 

 above and below, and its wing-covers tapering and shorter than the body. See 

 Harris's Treatise, p. 51. (Fitch.) 



23. The American timber-beetle. 



Hylecwltis amerioanus (Harris). 



Order Coleoptera ; Family Lymexylid^. 



A worm very similar to the preceding, but with a straight, sharp-pointed horn at 

 the end of its back in place of a leaf-like appendage ; changing into a pale brownish 

 red beetle, 0.40 long ; its wing-covers, except at their base audits breast, black, its 

 eyes small, and a glassy dot on the middle of its forehead resembling a small eyelet. 

 (See Harris's Treatise, p. 51.) 



This and the preceding are very rare insects, and their larvse have 

 never been detected, but are inferred by Dr. Harris to inhabit oaks and 

 to have the singular forms above indicated, from the analogy of the per- 

 fect insects to two European species. Foreign writers, I see, are misled 

 by Dr. Harris's account into supposing that it is authentically ascer- 

 tained that our insects coiucide in their larv^a state with the European 

 species. (Fitch.) 



Beetle. — Its head, thorax, abdomen, and legs are light brownish red ; the wing- 

 covers, except at the base, where they are also red, and the breast, between the middle 

 and hindmost legs, are black. 'Head not bowed down under the prothorax ; eyes 

 small and black; on the middle of the forehead is one small reddish eyelet ; antennae 

 like those of Lymexylon sericeum, but shorter ; thorax nearly square, but wider than 

 long; and in each wing-cover are three slightly elevated ribs. Length, lO™™ (-j^ 

 inch). (Harris.) 



Microclytus gazellnla (Haldemau). 



This beetle has been found in the oak in early May at Buffalo, N. 

 Y., by Messrs. Reinecke and Zesch. (Bull. Brooklyn Ent. Soc, vi, 36.) 

 . 5 ENT 6 



