INSECTS FEEDING ON DECAYING FRUIT. 175 



Amaurorhinus nitens Horn. — This is a small, elongate beetle, shining 

 black in color, and provided with a short beak or snout. 



It is not uncommonly found boring in winter-killed twigs of Orange, 

 or in portions of wood and bark which have been softened and rendered 

 porous by the action of a wood-destroying fungus. The larva and other 

 immature stages have never been observed. 



The family of the Cossonida, to which this beetle belongs, comprises 

 small insects, all of which, as far as their habits are known, feed upon 

 dead bark, pith, or spongy wood, and fungus. The above species is as 

 harmless as others of its family. It enters and feeds upon the wood 

 after all life has left it, and is probably attracted by the presence of a 

 fungus to the diseased portions which it infests. 



INSECTS FOUND IN WOUNDS AND FOOT-EOT SOBES. 



Bleeding wounds, especially sores in which fermentation of the sap 

 is taking place, are very attractive to insects of many kinds. It there- 

 fore frequently happens that some harmless sap-feeding insect is mis- 

 taken, by those who are ignorant of its habits, for the originator of the 

 mischief. 



A list of insects which through misapprehensions of this sort have 

 l»een reported by orange-growers as causing foot- rot, includes (1) Sop- 

 feeders ; beetles of the families Nitidulidoe and Monotomidce, which 

 live in all stages upon the fermenting sap of plants. (2) Euphoria sepitl- 

 chralis (Fab.), a Lamellicorn beetle, which is not unfrequently found 

 sipping the sap ; and the white, thread-like maggots of small flies, which 

 almost invariably make their appearance in sour sap. (3) Midas da- 

 vatiis Drury (Plate XIV, Fig. 4), a large black fly, with an orange colored 

 band on the abdomen, which hovers about the diseased spots in order 

 to prey upon flies and other insects attracted to the flowing sap. (4) 

 Scavengers, feeding upon the dead wood and bark ; these include besides 

 the Termites, of which mention has been made iua previous chapter, 

 several sawyers or larvae of beetles belonging to the Longicorn family, 

 but of unknown species. (5) A number of minute beetles, Lcemo- 

 phloeus, Lathridius, Saciwn, Hesperohccnns^ and others, commonly found 

 under the dead bark of trees, after it has been loosened by the gnaw- 

 ing of wood-eating insects. They are for the most part predatory upon 

 the other insect inhabitants of these lurking places, and their larvce 

 may be found pursuing and devouring the young of the wood-scaven- 

 gers, or even making war upon each other. 



INSECTS FEEDING UPON DECAYING FRUIT. 



SAP-BEETLES. (Family NitiduUdw.) 



Two species of this sap-loving family are so constantly found in rot- 

 ting oranges, and also in injured fruit, before it has fallen from the tree, 

 as sometimes to occasion the suspicion that they are responsible for the 

 splitting of the rind at the time when the orange is maturing. It has, 



