THE MAPLE BORER. 375 



parts of the town had been bored by them. One tree, over one foot 

 in thickness, had about twelve holes in the trunk, from which the 

 beetles had issued a year or two previous. The leaves during the 

 past summer were small and curled up, and the tree was evidently 

 in a sickly condition. The few Aphides and Psoci, observable on the 

 leaves in July and August, were not sufficiently numerous to occasion 

 the trouble, and we attribute it to the effects of the borer. Another 

 somewhat larger sugar maple in the same yard, the age of which 

 was about forty-five years, had but two holes iu it, made by the 

 same borer, probably in 1878 or 1879 ; the tree was nearly healthy, 

 with fully developed leaves. A red maple close at hand had not 

 been affected by the borer, and we could not learn that this species 

 {A. rubrum) had ever been attacked by this borer. It seems to us 

 that these are clearly demonstrated cases where healthy trees have 

 been killed by borers. 



The first observer to notice this borer, and the fact 

 that it destroys living maples, was Rev. L. W. Leon- 

 ard, who gave an account of its habits to Harris. His 

 attention was called, in 1828, to some young maples 

 in Keene, N. H., which were in a dying condition. 

 He discovered the insect in its beetle state under 

 the loosened bark of one of the trees, and traced the 

 recent track of the larva three inches into the solid 

 wood. In the course of a few years these trees, upon ^^'^- '^^'^■—GiycoWusspe. 



... /. -i-i . Ill , ciosus. Natural eize. 



the cultivation of which much care had been be- —From Saunders. 

 stowed, were nearly destroyed by the borers. 



This beetle was said by Mr. E. B. Reed, in 1872, to be gradually 

 destroying the sugar' maples at London, Canada, and in the Report 

 of the Entomological Society of Ontario for 1878 Mr. Saunders states 

 that the destruction was spreading rapidly in the streets of the same 

 city. To this society we are indebted for the use of the figure of the 

 beetle. 



Regarding its ravages in Vermont, Mr. J. A. Lintuer thus writes to 

 the Country Gentleman (1884): 



This borer is destroying a large number of our sugar maples, as its burrows usually 

 are carried around the trunk beneath the bark, and when several occur in the same 

 tree they girdle it by their interlacings and thus kill the tree. Even when they are 

 not fatal to the tree, they occasion unsightly cracking of the bark and serious deform- 

 ities of growth. In the pleasant village of Bennington, Vt., where I am sojourning, 

 I notice that very many of the beautiful sugar maples that ornament its streets and 

 shade its homes are threatened with speedy destruction through the attack of this 

 pernicious borer. 



The beetle, according to Harris, lays her eggs on the trunk of the 

 maple in July and August. The grubs burrow into the bark as soon as 

 they are hatched, au<l are thus protected during the winter. In the 

 spring they penetrate deeper, and form, in the course of the summer, 

 long and winding galleries in the wood, up and down the truuk. 



