198 THE KUT CULTURIST. 



THE PAINTED HICKORY BORER (Cyllene pictus. 

 Drury). This is, perhaps, one of the most common and 

 widely distributed of all the hickory borers, but, so far 

 as my observations have extended, it rarely attacks 

 young or healthy trees of any age ; in fact, I have never 

 found it in or about growing trees, but I have seen it, 

 by the thousands, breeding in decaying specimens and 

 in hickory cordwood cut during the winter months and 

 ranked up in shady places. A hickory tree cut down in 

 fall or winter, and left on the ground or cut up into 

 cordwood, is pretty sure to attract this borer early in 

 spring, the females swarming over the bark, depositing 

 their eggs upon it, and by the ensuing autumn the wood 

 will be fairly honeycombed if this insect is at all abun- 

 dant. The general color of the beetle is 

 black, and the size as shown in Fig. 7i. 

 There are three narrow, whitish bands 

 across the top of the thorax, and one 

 slightly broader band at the extreme point 

 of the wing-covers ; but the next band is 

 FIG. 71. in the form of an inverted V ; the point 

 HICKORY BOREK. O f the A does not quite touch the broad 

 lateral band, as in the closely allied species known as 

 the locust borer (C. robinia), with which it is often 

 confounded ; besides, in the latter the markings are of a 

 deep yellow, and not white or of a faint yellowish tinge. 

 The hickory borer always appears in spring, and the 

 locust borer in the fall, not later than September in this 

 part of the country. Below or behind the V-shaped 

 band there are three others, but all broken up into mere 

 dots, and not continuous. 



In the South, and especially in Texas, there is a 

 somewhat smaller but closely allied species (Cyllene 

 crinicornis) that attacks the pecan tree and its wood in 

 the same way as our common hickory borer, but in the 

 Southern or Southwestern species the bands on the 



