112 



the burrow at its extremity, and, by a change in the position of the head, may 

 serve to seize the fibre of wood to pull it off. 



When the bui-row is some six or seven inches in length, a rounded ex- 

 tremity is made to it, the female beetle having oviposited at its extremity, it 

 is for the time abandoned, and the parent beetles commence tho construction 

 of a branch. Eggs are laid as early as the beginning of August, and as late as 

 tho end of October, and usually, I think, in recently constructed branches of the 

 burrow. I have found single eggs, and groups of two or three, at various points 

 in such a branch, but the proper place seems to be at the rounded extremity, 

 as here I have found groups of nine, twelva, and even of twenty-three eggs. 

 These are simply little masses or heaps of eggs lying loose close to the end of 

 the burrow. In such burrows are also found the young larvas ; but before tho 

 larva? are hatched ther« appears on the wall of the burrow a damp, greyish-white, 

 felty-looking coating, sometimes narrowing the gallery to half its width, and 

 it is the undisturbed appearance of this coating which leads me to believe that 

 such a branch of tho gallery is for a time abandoned by the parent beetles. I 

 have found such a gallery in November unintruded upon, when other branches 

 of the burrow contained, half -grown larva ; whether these kept out of it by 

 their own instincts or were marshalled from it by their parents I cannot say. 

 But of this there can be no doubt, during the autumn months several batches 

 of eggs are successively laid in different branches of one system of burrows by 

 the same parents, of which the first are often full-grown before the last are 

 laid, and the burrows containing eggs and young larvae are respected by all the 

 other inhabitants of the burrow, notwithstanding th« fact that the full-grown 

 larvas are very fond of this felty coating, which I have seen them scrape off the 

 walls with their jaws with apparent gusto, and there is no physical impedi- 

 ment in their way. 



The greyish felt lining of the burrows consists of a mass of tubes be- 

 longing to the fungus to whose existence I have already alluded. Th« tube* 

 consist of a very thick wall filled with small rounded bodies (spores?) and 

 similar structures may be found in the surrounding wood, which has a sweet 

 heavy smell similar to that of freshly cut oak wood, but much mora strong. 

 The tubes that exist in the wood are no doubt properly to be regarded as my- 

 celium ; whether those in the burrows are so or an abnormal form of fructifi- 

 cation I cannot say. I believe that this mycelium is not that of any of the 

 larger funguses, but is probably that of some mould, or some species allied 

 to the yeast plant. 



The newly hatched larvae are not the straight cylindrical creatures that 

 the full-grown larvae are, but are rather flattened and disc-shaped, the lateral 

 region being largely developed, and each side carrying two rows of long stiff 

 bristles, each bristle surmounting a lateral tubercle. As the larvae consists of 

 a head and twelve segments, each row consists of eleven bristle-bearing tubercles, 

 the bristles of the anal segment being directed backwards. These bristles 



