272 



thought to be dying from their attacks. The second stated that the 

 beetles were very destructive to Norway maple, beech, and birch trees 



Tliis insect and its kind, as is well known, feed, in their mature con- 

 dition, on the sap or juices which exude from borer-infested trees and 

 from fruit which is over- ripe or has been injured from any cause, but it 

 is not probable that they often attack healthy fruit or seriously injure 

 trees. Their mouths are formed for sipping or lapping- vegetable juices 

 and not for boring or biting. Their active life as adult beetles is short 

 and they are incapable, therefore, of very extensive injuries except 

 when present in great numbers, as in the past year. 



The larva of this species is subterranean in habit, and has always 

 been supposed to live like other allied forms on the rootlets of grass 

 and other herbaceous plants. There is practically nothing published 

 concerning its larval habits beyond the fact that it occurs in its various 

 stages in the nests of ants. I have also reared it from larva) taken at 

 Cold (Spring Harbor, L. I., with those ol the allied AUorhina nitida in 

 manure. The larvte when found July 9 were encased in spherical 

 cocoons, smaller than those of AUorhina, but very similar in appear- 

 ance. Unfortunately I was unable to follow up the development of 

 the species. A day or two after the finding of these larviii I was 

 called away and did not return until the last week of August, when 

 the adults were found still living in their cocoons. 



Two or three weeks after the beetles are noticed in August and Sep- 

 tember they disappear and there can be no doubt that they then enter 

 the earth for hibernation. In the first warm days of spring they reaj)- 

 pear, when they may be seen hovering just above the ground along 

 pathways and in our gardens. 



Hand-picking appears to betheonly remedy for this insect. — F. H. C. 



ABUNDANCE OF AN IMPORTED SNOUT-BEETLE IN MAINE. 



During September of the present year a correspondent at Bangor^ 

 Me., sent to this office a small lot of a European snout beetle, Scta- 

 philus asperatus Bonsd. {muricatus Fab.), which has attracted some 

 little attention in that city. Our correspondent informs us that the 

 beetles gather on the fences, and "getting on the top rail just cluster 

 and keeping still seem to enjoy life." They have a singular habit of 

 "piling up on each other in a straight line, many at once and in many 

 small groups." They were not, however, observed to be copulating. 

 This unusual gathering took place during the first of September and 

 was preparatory to hibernation. 



The first notice of the occurrence of this insect in Xorth America is 

 by Mr. Samuel Henshaw, published in 1888 in Psyche (vol. v, p. 137). 

 The insect was collected at Brookline, Mass., by Mr. F. C. Bowditch, on 

 Populus bahamifera. In the Canadian Entomologist (vol. xxiii, pp. 

 23, 114, 1891) Mr. W. H. Harrington, reports this species at Sydney, 

 Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. It was found in 1884 and 1890 and was 



