110 



FOREST ENTOMOLOGY. 



bark of felled trees, preferring those trees which have been felled in 

 late spring or early summer. But meanwhile the stem-mother has 

 kept on depositing eggs, and beetles hatch out from the parent burrow 

 throughout the season, but more especially in the autumn. Thus the 

 perfect beetles arising from the second brood, together with the late 

 s warmers just referred to from the original burrow, quit the bark 

 practically simultaneously, and bore into the young leading shoots of 

 the Scots pine branches, entering the pith, and thus damaging the 

 shoots, so much so that they fall to the ground, and the beetles there- 

 fore may be found inside the pith of those shoots which so literally 

 strew the ground of pine woods in autumn. 



Some specimens leave the shoots to hibernate in the bark, and 

 others remain in the shoots over winter, to come 

 out again in the following spring. The contin- 

 ual destruction of shoots gives the tree the 

 appearance of being clipped or stumped, and 

 the pruning habits have given rise to the insect 

 being called in Germany the "wood-gardener" 

 or "forester." 



The perfect insect (fig. 104) is about 5 mm. 

 or i of an inch in length, of a pitchy bronze 

 colour, head and thorax approaching to black, 

 legs same colour as body, with light tibiae. The 

 elytra, or wing-cases, are rough, and rounded over 

 the sides, so that a transverse section of the 

 abdomen would be nearly circular. The elytra should be carefully 

 noted, and Dr Somerville gives the following detailed description : 



" The elytra are lustrous, slightly pubescent, and traversed longi- 

 tudinally by rows of fine punctures. The interspaces between the 

 punctated rows are somewhat wrinkled, and each contains a row of 

 hairy tubercles. These tubercles, in the case of the second interspaces 

 on either side of the middle suture, are only present as far as the 

 point where the elytra begin to bend downwards towards the apex ; 

 whereas in the other interspaces they are continued down the apical 

 declivity to the edge of the elytra. This peculiarity is most marked 

 in the male, though in both sexes it is quite observable with the 

 unaided eye when the insect is held in a good light with its back 

 towards the observer that is to say, when the apical declivity is 

 examined obliquely. Owing to the want of hairy tubercles in the 



Fig. 104. Hylurgus 

 piniperda. (From 

 ' The Forester,' by 

 J. Nisbet.) 



