THylastinus. | RHYNCHOPHORA. 415 
closely and rather strongly punctured, with an obscure dorsal carina ; 
elytra with deeply punctured striz, interstices somewhat rugose, clothed 
with short rigid hairs ; abdomen fuscous ; legs and antennze ferruginous ; 
episterna of metasternum covered with whitish scales, which, however, 
are only apparent in fresh specimens. L. 2} mm, 
On broom and furze ; also on low plants such as clover, Ononis, &e. ; occasionally 
found by sweeping herbage ; loca!, but not uncommon where it occurs ; Croydon, 
Riddlesdown, Claygate, Forest Hill, Ashtead, Birch Wood, Tottenham, Darenth, 
Bushey Park, Bearsted, Dartford, Sheerness, Gravesend ; Folkestone; Eastbourne ; 
Portsmouth district; Plymouth ; Swansea ; Llangollen; Monmouthshire, freely ; 
Scarborough ; Scotland, rare, Tweed, Forth and Moray districts. 
HYLESINUS, Fabricius. 
This genus contains about forty species, which are very widely dis- 
tributed ; eleven are found in Europe, and the remainder occur in North 
and South America, Ceylon, the Australian region, &e. ; four inhabit 
Britain, one of which, H. fraxini, is among the most abundant of our 
wood-boring beetles, and sometimes does considerable damage to young 
ash trees; the species vary considerably in size and may be distin- 
guished by having the funiculus of the antennx seven-jointed and the 
club of the same compressed and oblong; the episterna of the meta- 
sternum are broad and the anterior and intermediate coxe are more or 
less broadly distant ; the eyes are entire and transversely elongate and 
the tarsi have the third joint evidently longer than the preceding. 
The life history of all our species has been deseribed by various 
authors: that of H. fraxini has, however, been more fully discussed 
than the others ; all Entomologists who have ever worked the bark of 
dead ash trees are well acquainted with the formation of its burrows, 
which consist of a deep parent gallery and a large number of larval gal- 
leries which run off at right angles to it, and are quite adjacent to and 
sometimes even overlap one another at apex, forming a ramification of 
galleries that once seen can never again be mistaken; Dr, Chapman 
has given an account of the operations of the species in the Entomolo- 
gist’s Monthly Magazine, vol. v. p. 121, with further notes as to the 
economy of H. erenatus and H. vittatus ; the latter insect attacks the 
elm (rarely the ash), and the two former, as well as H. oleiperda, attack 
the ash ; in other countries, the latter species, as its name implies, is 
mostly attached to the olive tree; the most abundant of the species is 
H. frawini, which in May attacks recently fallen ash trees; the beetles 
bore very rapidly into the bark, and usually before the female beetle 
has quite buried itself in the bark the male arrives, and in a few days 
the two beetles are to be found rapidly extending the gallery in both 
directions from the aperture of entry ; asa rule most insects on their 
escape from the pupal state contain their eggs ready to be laid and 
requiring only fertilization, but in these, as in many of the more active 
Coleoptera, the eggs are developed after attaining the perfect state Bea 
