MAPLE BORERS. 



389 



iujured by blazing or peeling of bark, this little beetle may frequently 

 be seen boring into the exposed wood, or if the injury is an old one, 

 perhaps numbers may be found emerging." 



This beetle, Mr. Devereaux writes me, is found in New York in great 

 abundance in the larval state in timber, logs, and cord- wood. It 

 deposits its eggs in the summer of the year in which the tree is cut; 

 many generations following each other for a number of years in the 

 same log. 



The beetle. — Brownish, with the head almost hidden by the prothorax. The male 

 much smaller, with reddish pectinate antennae. Length, 5""». 



14. Eupsalis minuta (Drury). 



Mr. Harrington records collecting about twenty of these beetles from 

 under the bark of a large fallen sugar maple. '' The larvte had appa- 

 rently lived chiefly on the inner layers of the bark and on the sap wood. 

 On another occasion I found specimens emerging from a maple stump.'^ 

 (See Oak Insects, p. 69.) 



15. The sugar-maple timber beetle. 



Corthyhis pnnciatissimus (Zimm.) 



Order Coleoptera ; family Scolytid^. 



The devastations of this beetle have been described by Dr. C. H. 

 Merriam in the American Naturalist for January, 1883 : 



I noticed that a large percentage of the undergrowth of the sugar maple in Lewis 

 County, northern New York, seemed to be dying. The leaves drooped and withered. 



Fig. 144. Mines of Corthylus punctatissimus. — Merriam del. 



and finally shriveled and dried, but still clung to the branches. The majority of the 

 plants affected were bushes a centimeter or two in thickness, and averagiug from one to 

 two meters in height, though a few exceeded these dimensions. On attempting to 

 pull them up they uniformly, and almost without exception, broke off at the level of 



