CURIOUS APPEAEANCE OF THE WASP BEETLE. 197 



museum. He had a case of stuffed birds, in which the birda 

 hud been made to perch on oak branches. These branches had 

 been first carefully dried and then baked, and yet, after the 

 lapse of three years, three specimens of the Wasp Beetle 

 emerged from the branches, having survived the very im- 

 pleasant process to which they had been subjected. 



This is not a solitary instance of the appearance of the Wasp 

 Beetle. In 1865 a piece of pollard oak was sent to the British 

 Museum, for the purpose of exhibiting the round, hard galls of 

 Cynips lignicola, which was then not nearly so common as it is 

 now. The oak, with its crop of galls, was placed in a glass 

 case, together with a large lump of camphor, a material which 

 is supposed to be poisonous to insects. Yet, on every suc- 

 ceeding spring, several specimens of the Wasp Beetle made 

 their escape from the wood in which they had passed their 

 larval state, the camphor having had no injurious effect upcm 

 them. A still more curious example of the unexpected ap- 

 pearance of a wood-boring Beetle will presently be mentioned. 



Our last example of this family is shown on Woodcut XXI. 

 Fig. 1. Its name is Gracllia pygmcea. This genus is to be 

 distinguished by the long slender body, the clubbed femora, 

 the long fifth joint of the antennae, and the elongated last joint 

 of the palpi. 



As its specific name implies, this is a very small insect, nevei 

 exceeding a quarter of an inch in length, and being generallj 

 much less. The colour of the Beetle is reddish-brown, with 

 the exception of the under surface of the abdomen, which is 

 shining-black. There is an angular projection in the middle of 

 the elytra. 



This tiny wood-borer is one of those insects which are very 

 local, but very plentiful in those places which they choose for 

 their residence. Sometimes it prefers to live in houses, and 

 sometimes in the open air. It takes as great a range in point 

 of diet as in residence. Its ordinary, and indeed its normal, 

 food is decaying wood, and the insect may accordingly be 

 found in old railings and similar localities. But it sometimes 

 takes a strange fancy for leather, and has been captured in 

 some numbers while feeding on old shoes. Sometimes speci- 

 mens of this insect have been taken in the middle of Hour- 



