THE STATE ENTOMOLOGIST. 127 



[Fig. 69.] thosoma cylindricuni, Fabr.), a large flattened, 



long-horned light bay-colored beetle which is 

 common throughout the country and especially in 

 the Mississippi valley, and which is represented of 

 the natural size at Figure 69. True, according to 

 Westwood, the larvae of the Prionim: have the 

 second segment enlarged and broadened, while 

 the closely allied family Cerambycid.e, has the first 

 segment thus enlarged as in our insect ; but from 

 a larva resembling ours in every respect so far as 

 his description goes, and which he found in Sep- 

 tember, 1867, in decaying pine wood, Mr. Walsh 

 actually bred, about the last of June, 186S, the Cy- 

 lindrical Orthosoma. The only accounts on record 

 which pretend to give the natural history of this beetle, are by Dr. 

 Fitch and S. S. Rathvon, that of the former in his 4th Report, § 239, 

 and that of the latter in the Agricultural Reportfor 1861, pp. 611-612. 

 Dr. Fitch describes the larva, which he supposed belonged to this 

 beetle, but which he did not breed, as occurring in pine trees, and as 

 having the first ring longest and the second broadest; while Mr. 

 Rathvon figures it with the first ring infinitely shorter than the sec- 

 ond, but confesses that the drawing was made from memory, and he 

 doubtless trusted to the authority of Westwood. Furthermore Mon- 

 sieur E. Perris has figured at Plate 6, Figure 362, of the "Annales de la 

 Soci6te Entomologique de France," for 1856, the larva of Prionus oh- 

 scurus, Oliv. which bores into the pine and which very closely re- 

 sembles our larva, the first and not the second segment being en- 

 larged. 



Until the past summer nothing had been published about the 

 attacks of this insect on Grape roots, and yet upon inquiry I find that 

 it has been known for several years. Mr. Spaulding informs me that 

 the first that was seen of it in his neighborhood was in 1866, when his 

 man found an enormous one in a wild vine which he was about to 

 graft; but Mr. Geo. Husmann, of Hermann, has been acquainted with 

 it since 1850, and has known it to occur around Hermann since 1854. 

 Indeed Mr. Husmann informs me that he has never observed the old 

 Grape-vine Borer which has 16 legs and which produces a moth (jE- 

 geria polisiiformis, Harris) but that in speaking of the Grape-root 

 Borer he has always referred to this species, Mr. J. H. Tice found it in 

 apple roots in 1860 on the place of James Sappington of St. Louis, 

 while the following item by A. J. H., of Vineland, N. J., which appeared 

 in the January (1869) number of the Gardener's Monthly, would in- 

 dicate that it has the same habit all over the country : 



"On page 354 October number of Agriculturist, reference is made 

 to a " vine borer " in Missouri that cuts off vines below the surface. 

 It is also mentioned and partially described in the last Gardener's 



