26 



THE PRACTICAL ENTOMOLOGIST. 



a thousand grown men, and probably there will not be 

 two out of the thousand, that cannot be readily distin- 

 guished one from tlie other. Just as the grub that you 

 find in your fruit-trees is the larva of the perfect insect, 

 so is the baby the larva of the adult man. If the reader 

 will east his eye over the eight engravings given with this 

 article, he will have no difficulty in perceiving, that each 

 of them represents a different kind or species of insect, 

 although none of them are colored to the life. All these 

 eight figures represent Borers of different kinds, in their 

 perfect or winged state. If equally good figures had been 

 given of the larvce, that produce these eight kinds of 

 borers, it would take an Entomologist to see any differ- 

 ence between them, unless perhaps in the case of one or 

 two of them. 



We perceive by this time that it is no use to talk about 

 "Borers" generally, without specifying the particular 

 kind of Borer to which you refer. In many cases it is not 

 even enough to specify the jiarticular kind of tree that 

 they attack; for although there is but one kind of Borer 

 that commonly attacks the Peach-tree, yet there are no 

 less than three kinds thatcommonly attack the Apple-tree, 

 two of which are about equally destructive and equally 

 common, though one kind occurs more frequently in one 

 section of the country and the other in another section. 

 And now, having cleared the ground before us, we will 

 take up in succession the eight kinds of Borers whose 

 Natural History I propose to elucidate. The reader will 

 please to bear in mind, that in each case it is the Perfect 

 Insect only, and not the larva or grub, that is figured. 

 The two-striped Borer. {Saperda bivitlata Say.) 

 On Apple, Pear and Quince. 

 The larva of this Beetle, which commonly infests the 

 Apple-tree, is of a whitish color, about an inch or so long 

 Fig. 1. when full-grown, and about the thickness of 

 a goose-quill, and nearly as round as a goose- 

 quill. As is the case with almost all Borers, 

 the perfect female insect deposits her egg 

 upon the bark, or among the chinks and 

 cracks of the bark ; and the young larva 

 soon afterwards hatches out and mines its 



Colors— cinnam-n'ay in by a hole so minute that it soon 

 on brown aod 

 wbue. closes up. Consequently the holes that we 



see in our trees are not made by the larva in getting into 

 the tree, but ire either opened by him, when he is about 

 half-grown, in order to get rid of his '■ castings " or excre- 

 ment, or are made by him, when he is full-grown, to af- 

 ford "a passage for the winged insect. In early life he 

 confines himself entirely to the sai>wood, and it is at that 

 period that the greatest damage is done, young trees, 

 when they contain several borers, being often completely 

 girdled by them. As he approaches maturity, the larva 

 Htrikes off into the heart-wood, which of course is, com- 

 paratively speaking, but slightly injurious to the tree. 

 The perfect insect conies out some time in June in the 

 latitude of New York, when they couple and the female 

 shortly afterwards lays her eggs. North and South of 

 New York it doubtless comes out a little later or a little 

 earlier. The larva is two years and perhaps longer in 

 arriving at maturity, so that an egg laid in 186G win not 

 reproduce the perfect beetle until at least 18BS. The in- 

 sect is remarkable for generally confining itself to the 

 butt of the trunk, and by looking there carefully, tlie 

 holes through which it throws out its castings may often be 

 discovered, by the little piles of sawdust-like matter that 

 hti on the ground immediately under them. In such 



cases, the best and only effectual remedy is the knife. 

 Very rarely the larva is found in the crotch of the tree. 

 For an effectual mode of preserving Apple-trees from 

 the attacks of this Borer, and also for the way to distin- 

 guish him from the following kind, see under that kind. 

 Besides Apple-trees, he sometimes attacks Peai-trecs, and 

 he is death ujion Quince-trees. 



The Suprestis Borer. (Chryxobothris fcmorata Fabr.) 



On Apple, Ac. 

 This Beetle is a very general feeder, being found not 

 only in the Apple-tree, but in a great variety of forest- 

 trees, oak, maple, Ac. The larva is whitish, and when 

 Fig. 2. full-grown scarcely exceeds half an inch in 

 length, and instead of being cylindrical, like 

 the preceding, he is hammer-headed, his 

 head, or fore-part rather, being twice as wide 

 as the rest of the body, and so much flattened 

 that he looks as if he had been squeezed flat 

 Colors — dark between two squares of glass. Consequently, 

 brassy sputa, as the fore-part of his body is twice as wide 

 as it is high, he bores a hole to fit it, of an oval shape, and 

 twice as wide as high; whereas the other apple-tree borer 

 bores a hole nearly as round as a pea. Hence, from the 

 shape of the holes alone, it is always easy to distinguish an 

 Apple-tree, that has been bored up by this insect, from one 

 that has been bored up by the " Two-striped Borer ; " and 

 as the insect itself is so much smaller than the other, its 

 holes are also considerably smaller. The perfect insect 

 appears at the same time of the year as the preceding, and 

 its habits are in all respects similar, except that it flies 

 by day and not by night, and the larva only requires 

 twelve months, instead of twenty-four or over, to arrive 

 at maturity, and except also that it does not confine itself 

 to any particular part of the tree. It is, indeed, peculiarly 

 fond of what are known as "sun-scalded" trees, attacking 

 by preference the part of the trunk facing the southwest, 

 where the bark has been killed; but I have dug them 

 out of the butts of perfectly sound and healthy young 

 Apple-trees, and I have also dug them out of Apple-tree 

 limbs, which did not exceed three-quarters of an inch in 

 diameter. Towards the end of May, the spot where they 

 lie may generally be discovered by the bark sinking 

 down slightly and changing color a little, and then is the 

 best time to pursue them with the knife. They open no 

 hole that I could ever perceive to throw out their ** cast- 

 ings " by, and they never, so far as I have perceived, bore 

 deep into the solid heart- wood like the preceding, though 

 Dr. Fitch found them to do so. 



But prevention is better than cure, and I find it much 

 less trouble to keep borers out of my Apple-trees, than to 

 dig them out when they are already there. The method 

 is cheap, simi^le and effectual. About the last of May, or 

 a little earlier or later according to the latitude, take a 

 bar of common soap — the softer and newer the better — 

 and go over your trees with it, rubbing them till they 

 assume a whitish appearance. If you are certain that it 

 is only the "Two-striped Borer" that is likely to molest 

 you, you need only go over the lower part of the trunk 

 and the principal crotch, in which last place it is a good 

 plan to stick a chunk of the soap, to be washed down by 

 the rains; but if you have the " Buprestis Borer" also to 

 guard agai-nst, you must go over the entire trunk and the 

 principal limbs also. Previous to 1S61 my apple-trees 

 used to be badly bored up by the " Buprestis," and one 

 young tree it completely killed forme. In 1S61 I adopted 

 the above plan, on the recommendation of Dr. Fitch, the 



