THE GENUS PISSODES AND ITS IMPORTANCE IN FORESTRY. 4] 
rows down the elytra differ in size, some being distinctly larger. 
Not a native of Britain. 
Pissodes piceae is found exclusively on silver fir. Its damage 
is done on old grown timber, and it never appears as a nursery 
or plantation pest. For egg-laying, sickly growing stems, freshly 
felled stems, blown down trees, stacked timber, are all made use 
of. Eggs may be laid in the thick bark of the under stem parts, 
several together. The wide coarse larval tunnels end in the 
usual pupa-bed, covered with very coarse chips. 
The end of June and July, in middle Europe, seems to be the 
flight-time for the beetles. 
From specimens of bark containing grown larve and pupe, 
collected by me in the middle of May, I have bred out the beetles 
by the end of July. The generation is said to be an annual one. 
In absence of what we found to be a guide suggesting attack 
with the other /Pissodes species, viz., needle-discoloration, the 
German forester suspects piceae attack when woodpeckers are 
found busy in their visits to the silver fir. ‘The woodpeckers 
come for the enclosed larvee. 
Pissodes scabricollis. 
This is the smallest of the Pissodes species, measuring without 
its rostrum sometimes less than } inch. It is brownish-black, 
posterior corners of prothorax rounded. Upper surface of pro- 
thorax has a raised middle line not quite reaching the base. On 
each side of this middle line is a white dot, while round the edge 
are yellowish-white scales. Scutellum white. On the elytra we 
find a yellow spot on each side in front of their middle, and 
behind their middle a broad, somewhat interrupted, yellowish- 
white band. Pauly, who has more than once found it wrongly 
named in collections, insists on the following as characteristics :— 
Smallness, blackness, and the broad, white, and yellow band 
behind the middle of the elytra. 
P. scabricollis is a form regarding whose life-history and work 
much remains to be investigated. The beetle has been taken in 
large numbers, but up till now its larve and pup are not 
certainly known in a state of nature. Dr Pauly, of Munich, by 
keeping a number of these weevils in captivity, and supplying 
them with spruce, has succeeded in breeding the beetles, obtain- 
ing all the stages from the egg onwards. It will be remembered 
