12 INSECTS INJURIOUS TO FOREST AND SHADE TREES. 
Wings which are crossed by numerous black lines, the outer margin only 
of the forward pair being opaque and of a gray color; the hind wings 
of the male are colorless, with the inner margin broadly blackish and 
the hind edge coal-black. 
3. THE RED-OAK FLAT-HEADED BORER. 
Chrysobothris dentipes Germar. 
Order COLEOPTERA; Family BUPRESTID.¥. 
Eating a slender, winding, broad, shallow burrow between the bark and sap-wood 
of newly-felled oak trees; a white, footless grub, with the fore part of the body enor- 
mously large, circular, and flattened, inclosing the small head in front. 
This singularly-shaped borer is often found under the bark of newly- 
felled oaks, or those which have been prostrate for a longer time. The 
one here roughly figured occurred with others under the bark of the red 
oak at Salem, Mass., early in May, in company with more numerous 
individuals of Magdalis olyra, a small weevil also common in the Northern 
States, under the loosened, partly decayed bark of the oak. 
It will be seen by the form of this singular borer that it is adapted for 
a life under or next to the bark of diseased trees, as it is quite unfitted , 
by reason of the enormously swollen front rings of the body, 
pruner (Stenocorus putator). With its short, powerful jaws it 
can eat its way on either side in front of it, after hatching from 
the egg which is probably laid by the parent beetle in some 
crack in the bark. Its head is rather small and partly sunken 
within the segment next behind the head. This segment, 
destined to be the prothorax of the beetle, is remarkably broad, 
eee nearly three times as much so as the hinder segments, and 
posed lar- fully as broad again as it is long, while the surface above is 
a flat and more or less rough or pitted in the middle. With this 
enlarged, UNUSUAL form it can eat its way in a serpentine course under 
—From the bark, deriving its nourishment from the sap-wood next to 
Packan’- the bark. Owing to the form of its body in front, the burrow 
is Shallow and broad, in transverse outline oval cylindrical. The body of 
this as well as most other borers is provided with fine, delicate, scattered 
hairs, projecting on each side of each segment. Judging by analogy, 
these hairs are probably provided each with a fine nerve (though this 
remains to be proved), and probably are endowed with a delicate sense 
of touch, useful to the insect as it moves to and fro in its gallery. The 
Buprestid larvie are blind, without simple eyes, since living as they do 
in total darkness and never coming to the light they do not need even 
the simple eyes present in many other larvee, and which are probably 
chiefly of use in enabling the insect to distinguish light from darkness. 
The larvee of the Buprestidae and the breeding habits of the beetles 
for boring very far into the living fresh wood, as is the case 
* with the oak-boring caterpillar of Vyleutes robinie, or the oak 
