THE PRACTICAL ENTOMOLOGIST. 



107 



ANSWEES TO COEEESPONDENTS. 



Sam. Haycraft, Corr. Seer. Kentucky Pomol. and Horfc. 

 Soc. — The ehestnut-brown beetle, two inches long, and 

 with pronged jaws, like a buck's horn, almost as long as 

 its body, is the male of Lucanns elaphus. It is commonly 

 known in your State, unless I have been misinformed, as 

 the Buck-bug — a pretty fair translation of the seieutifio 

 name of the species which is the Greek word for Deer (cla- 

 ■phus). The female has jaws only of the ordinary size, and 

 is very rare in collections — indeed I know of no collec- 

 tion but my own that possesses a specimen of that ee.K. 

 I took mine in South Illinois, si.x years ago. In North 

 Illinois the species is not met with, though we have two 

 other species of the same genus which are common 

 enough, one of which is also common iu South Illinois, 

 and probably with you also. It belongs to the Lucanus 

 family of beetles — all the members of which feed in tlie 

 larva state on decaying wood, and none of them on living 

 vegetable substances. Instead of being injurious, they 

 are consequently beneficial, by clearing away decaying 

 matter that would otherwise generate fevers and agues. 



The males througho\it the Lucanus family have much 

 longer jaws than the females, but in no North American 

 species' are they so enormously lengthened as in your in- 

 sect. Both males and females of this family are popu- 

 larly known in the North as " Horn-bugs;" though the 

 appendages in question are confined to the male sex, and 

 in reality are not horns, but true jaws. I recently, in the 

 Practical E.vtomologlst, (p. 88), referred to this case as 

 one of those, where an organ is perverted from its nor- 

 mal functions in order to enable the male to grasp more 

 readily the body of the female. We find another such 

 case in a gigantic Fly with four gray wings, common 

 near large rivers, {Corydalis coraMtw-s), where the jaws 

 of the male are lengthened into the shape of the finger of 

 a grain-cradle, evidently to enable him to embrace the 

 soft body of the female ; for, as jaws to bite or gnaw with, 

 they are absolutely useless. In this instance, although 

 the jaws both of the jierfect female fly and of the larva 

 are armed with strong horny teeth, yet the jaws of the 

 perfect male fly are quite smooth. The reason is evident. 

 If they were armed with sharp prongs and teeth, they 

 would penetrate the soft body o( the female fly, and thus 

 defeat the purpose for which nature co'ustructed them. 

 The Horn-bugs, on the contrary, are, as is well known, 

 enveloped in a strong coat of mail, and here we find the 

 prehensile jaws of the male armed with sharp prongs and 

 teeth, and curved iu such a manner as to give the best 

 possible grip on the slippery, shelly body of the female. 

 Thus does Nature, ever prompt and ever thoughtful, mo- 

 dify her plans to suit the particular circumstances of 

 every case ; and even in the beetle that we every day 

 crush ruthlessly under our feet, we may find the clearest 

 proofs, that the world, as it now exists, could never have 

 been generated by the fortuitous concurrence of atoms, as 

 was formerly believed by the old Epicurean school of phi- 

 losophers, and is still believed by a few scattering indivi- 

 duals in these modern times. 



Thos Siveter, Iowa. — I have no specimens of Trichina 

 spiralis. The cocoon must be that of some species oi Al- 

 tacus, perhaps vC Attacus luna, the great grass-green moth 

 with long tails to its hind wings. But it is a great deal 

 larger thau any that I ever saw. 



Thos. Gregg, Illinois. — The gray snout-beetle, that you 

 find on apple and plum trees. Is the New York Weevil 

 (Ithyccrus novcboracensis), so called because it was origi- 

 nally described by Forster from a specimen foufld in New 

 York. It is, however, comparatively quite rare in the 

 Eastern States, but in the West it is common, and some- 

 times swarms in nurseries and ruins hosts of young trees. 

 Its mode of working is to devour the buds and young 

 shoots. It should be slain without mercy, wherever it is 

 found. 



J. J. Jackson, Delaware. — The large beetle you send 

 is the same JVec7'0^/ton*.s amenca?iK.s, which I have men- 

 tioned in the Answer to A. D. Strong, in this number 

 of the PnACTiCAi, E.VT.0M0L0GIST. For the habits of these 

 "Burying-beetles" I must refer you to that Answer. Their 

 larvae are active six-legged grubs. 



Henry Morey, Illinois. — There are two broods of Codling 

 Moths every year, at all events, there are two -in these 

 latitudes, though possibly in New England there may be 



but one. The first comes out in June, about the time, 

 tliat the apples are as big as hazel nuts, from pupa3 that 

 have passed the winter in that state. After 2^airing, the 

 females of this brood lay their eggs in the blossom end of 

 the young apples, the larvaB hatching out from which, 

 burrow into the core and live there till they are full-fed. 

 The moths from this brood of larvse make their appearance 

 about the end of July or the beginning of August, and de- 

 posit a second crop of eggs in the apples of the same 

 year's growth, the larvae from which leave the apples 

 probably towards the end of September. There are, how- 

 ever, a few late individuals of the first brood of larvaj 

 and early ones of the second, so that practically one 

 must search for their cocoons all the time, from July 15 to 

 September 30. I have myself bred numbers of the moths 

 about the end of July from apples of the same year's 

 growth, thus proving that it scarcely takes two months 

 for the insect to pass through all its stages from egg to 

 moth. The larvre of both broods bore their way out of 

 the apple when full-fed, and usually spin up under loose 

 bark, under hay-bands or cloths wrapped by way of trap 

 round the trunk of the tree, Ac. The "little apples that 

 fall off about the 1st of July" are very probably infested 

 by this insect; or they may be attacked by the "Four- 

 humped Curculio" of which I recently sjjoke. 



Thos. Wiggins, Ohio. — The beetle reached me in good 

 order and alive. It is a male of a species {Clyius pictus) 

 which produces one of the borers of the Hickory. What 

 is very remarkable, and what I was the first to point out, 

 the female of this species is absolutely undistinguishable 

 from the female of the species (Ch/tus robmice) which pro- 

 duces the destructive borer of the Locust, though the 

 males are very different, and both sexes of each come out 

 iu the perfect beetle state at very dillerent times of the 

 year, namely, the Hickory-boring Beetle in May and 

 June and the Locust-boring Beetle in August and Sep- 

 tember. Indeed, until I published on the subject, all au- 

 thors had confounded together these two very distinct 

 species. For further information on this matter I must 

 refer you to my Paper on Borers, in Vol. I of the Practi- 

 cal Entomologist, where on p. 29 you will find a figure 

 of the male of your species. 



The second insect that you send, is the larva of Coryda- 

 lis cornutus — a gigantic four-winged fly with gray wings, 

 which flies by night near large rivers. Its larva lives in 

 the water, but crawls out and hides under stones, logs, 

 planks, Ac, to pass into the pupa state. It makes excel- 

 lent fish-bait. For further particulars I must refer you 

 to the Answer to Jos. S. Lewis, in the Practical Entomo- 

 logist Vol. I, p. 113. 



G. W. Smith, Mich. — As my promised Article on 

 "Wasps and their Habits" will be crowded out of the 

 Practical E.vtomologist, I will now state briefly that the 

 Blue Wasp which you saw bury a large spider in a sandy 

 place, placed it there as food for its young larva, having 

 tirst stung the spider so as to paralyze but not to kill it. 

 This is the general habit of all the Digger Wasps — to 

 which group the Blue Wasp (iS/i/ie.r cmrulea) appertains. 

 But they do not all employ Spiders for this purpose, many 

 selecting various kinds of insects, as Snout-beetles, Grass- 

 hoppers, Caterpillars, Plant-lice, kc. Neither do they all 

 burrow underground to form nests for their future larvie, 

 some boring into decayed wood, and some making clay- 

 cells in the open air, as for example the well-known 

 Black and Yellow Wasp {Pclopceus lunaius) that con- 

 structs the so-called "mud-dabs." 



S. P. Monks, N. Y. — The minute parasitic flies, of which 

 you found such numbers inside a chrj'salis, belong to the 

 Pteromalus group of the great Chalcis family. These cA«/- 

 cis flies very commonly transform inside the pupa upon 

 which they prey. From one pupa of a moth I once ob- 

 tained 99 such flies. On the contrary, the true Ichneu- 

 mons emerge to the light of day to pass into the pujia 

 state, and so do most of the spurious Ichneumons (Braco- 

 nidcE), though the Aphidiiis group of these last tran.'^form 

 inside the body of the Plant-louse that they have preyed 

 on. One reason, perhaps, for the above difference in ha- 

 bits is, that the Chalcis flies spin no cocoons at all, and all 

 the true Ichneumons and most of the spurious Ichneu- 

 mons spin silken cocoons. 



You object, on grammatical grounds I suppose, to the 

 use of £uch plural forms as "Chrysalises" and "Funguses," 

 and advocate, as I infer, the use of the Latin plurals 

 "Chrysalides" and "Fuugi." I think that when "Chrv- 



