110 COLEOPTERA. 



also sometimes found in Pennsylvania; but he does not 

 appear to have known anything of its history. It is also 

 found in Massachusetts, but has been rarely seen until 

 within a few years. One of my specimens was taken in 

 Milton about twenty years ago, and several others were 

 taken in Cambridge, during the summers of 1843 and 1844, 

 upon the European lindens, from the trunks and branches 

 of which they had just come forth. A knowledge of the 

 habits of this insect might have led to its more frequent 

 discovery. One of the lindens above named was a noble 

 and venerable tree, with a trunk measuring eight feet and 

 five inches in circumference, three feet from the ground. 

 A strip of the bark, two feet wide at the bottom, and 

 extending to the top of the trunk, had been destroyed, and 

 the exposed surface of the wood was pierced and grooved 

 with countless numbers of holes, wherein the borers had 

 been bred, and whence swarms of the beetles must have 

 issued in past times. Some of the large limbs and a portion 

 of the top of the tree had fallen, apparently in consequence 

 of the ravages of these insects ; and it is a matter of surprise 

 that this fine linden should have withstood and outlived the 

 attacks of such a host of miners and sappers. 



The lindens of Philadelphia have suffered much more 

 severely from these borers. Dr. Paul Swift, in a letter 

 written in May, 1844, gave to me the following interesting 

 account of them. " The trees in Washington and Inde- 

 pendence Squares were first observed to have been attacked 

 about seven years ago. Within two years, it has been found 

 necessary to cut down forty-seven European lindens in the 

 former square alone, where there now remain only a few 

 American lindens, and these a good deal eaten." " Many 

 of the beetles were found upon the small branches and leaves 

 on the 28th day of May, and it is said that they come out 

 as early as the first of the month, and continue to make 

 their way through the bark of the trunk and large branches 

 during the whole of the warm season. They immediately fly 



