NOTES AND QUERIES. 199 
In conclusion, I should like to express my indebtedness to Mr 
MacDougall for much kind assistance and information in relation 
to the various insects found during the year. 
ARCHIBALD MITCHELL, Forester, 
Dunraven Castle, Glamorganshire. 
Notes on Pissodes notatus OCCURRING AT DUNRAVEN, 
GLAMORGANSHIRE. 
After Mr MacDougall’s exhaustive account of the genus Pissodes 
in last year’s Z'’ransactions, perhaps the following notes with regard 
to P. notatus may be interesting. 
The trees attacked here are chiefly the Corsican pine, Pinus 
Laricio, though it often occurs on the Black Austrian, and some- 
times on the Weymouth pine. I have found hand-picking a very 
good means of lessening the attack. The beetles are usually found 
on sickly plants—those barked by rabbits or weakened by the 
feeding of the insects the previous year. ‘The latter are easily 
distinguishable, because of the resin exuding from the puncture in 
the cortex. If these are looked over once or twice a week in early 
spring, before much egg-laying can have taken place, a good many 
beetles may be gathered, and many trees, otherwise doomed to be 
the birthplace of further swarms, may recover. September and 
October are also good months for hand-picking. It takes some 
practice to be able to pick out the insect among the needles and 
bark scales, the general colour being so similar. The 15th of 
April is the earliest I have found the beetles out on the branches. 
A favourite place for the larval borings is the pith of the last 
two or three years’ growths. The thinness of the cortex there 
seems to induce the larve at an early stage of its existence to bore 
right through the wood into the medulla. It continues its boring 
either up or down the pith, where at length it forms its pupal 
chamber. It sometimes happens that an attacked tree is met 
with when there are no means at hand for burning it. In such a 
case, the readiest method of extermination is barking the tree and 
destroying the insects inside; but all such trees should also be 
split down from the top, and it is surprising how many beetles 
will be met with in the pith. 
