184 WILLOW. [1899 



punctures of the sfcrijr! vrry lanjr : the interstices closely punctured ; 

 the third, fifth, and seventh furnished, like the thorax, with hunches 

 of bright black scales. Head black ; proboscis stout, and slightly 

 curved, and, when at rest, fitted beneath the thorax ; horns reddish, 

 elbowed, and terminated by an ovate club. Legs black; in the 

 specimens before me more or less marked or banded with ochreous, 

 especially on the thighs of the fore legs. Wings transparent, with 

 strong veins, those. at the lower part chestnut coloured. 



The above notes give a fair description of the appearance of the 

 beetle as seen natural size or slightly magnified ; but (when under a 

 powerful magnifier) the marking will be seen to be elaborately and 

 delicately varied. The black thorax has three longitudinal lines of 

 yellowish colour more or less present ; and the wing-cases have varia- 

 tions of black dots on the yellow-tinted apical portion ; and other 

 distributions of whitish or yellowish tints, together with the large 

 shallow punctures of the stria), on the wing-cases, and the bright black 

 bunches of scales, give a variety to the appearance almost impossible 

 to describe. 



The larva, or grub, is stated to be very like that of the Pine 

 Weevil {Hi/lohius /ibietis). It is about half an inch long, body whitish, 

 sprinkled with bristly hairs standing well apart, with two longer 

 bristles at the hinder angles of the tail extremity. The three riugs 

 behind the head are swelled beneath, with a semicircular enlargement 

 on each side bearing a bristly hair. 



The beetles are to be found pairing on shoots (as of Sallow or 

 Willow) at the end of April and beginning of May, and it is observed 

 that, whether singly or in pairs, they will fall to the ground on the 

 slightest shake, and lie there for a long time as if dead. During the 

 period of its existence in beetle state the infestation does some amount 

 of harm, but the mischief from this cause is not by any means 

 necessarily serious, as the duration of life-time is limited. 



The life-history, put shortly, is that the females lay their eggs singly 

 on the stems of their food-plants; in about fourteen days the larvae 

 hatch, and, after gnawing under the bark, bore tunnels in the wood, 

 leaving the rubbish or dirt from their gnawings pressed together 

 behind them. As the larva increases in size, the brown "boring 

 chips " and excrement are thrown out at the aperture of the boring. 

 So far as is shown by published descriptions and figures, and com- 

 parison with such specimens as I possess, the tunnelling in the wood 

 of the small stems has no marked characteristic ; the galleries may 

 run parallel along the inner part of the stem (as shown in the figure, 

 from life, at p. 181, of a Willow stem an inch in diameter), or they 

 may take a slightly winding course. 



In the figure now before me (in • Forest Protection,' by Prof. 



