114 COLEOPTERA. 



middle, and thickened a little at each end. The head is 

 proportionally larger than in the other borers ; the first three 

 rings of the body are short, the second being the widest, and 

 each of them is provided beneath with a pair of minute 

 sharp-pointed warts or imperfect legs ; the remaining rings 

 are smooth, and without tubercles or rasps ; the last three 

 are rather thicker than those which immediately precede 

 them, and the twelfth ring is very obtusely rounded at the 

 end. The beetles from these borers are very slender, and 

 of a cylindrical form, and their antennas are of moderate 

 length and do not taper much towards the end. 



The species which attacks the blackberry appears to be the 

 Saperda ( Oberea) tripunctata of Fabricius (Fig. 

 51). It is of a deep black color, except the 

 fore part of the breast and the top of the tho- 

 rax, which are rusty yellow, and there are two 

 black elevated dots on the middle of the thorax, 

 and a third dot on the hinder edge close to the 

 scutel ; the wing-covers are coarsely punctured, 

 in rows on the top, and irregularly on the sides and tips, 

 each of which is slightly notched and ends with two little 

 points. The two black dots on the middle of the thorax are 

 sometimes wanting. This beetle varies from three tenths 

 to half an inch in length. It finishes its transformations 

 towards the end of July, and lays its eggs early in August, 

 one by one, on the stems of the blackberry and raspberry, 

 near a leaf or small twig. The grubs burrow directly into 

 {lie pith, which they consume as they proceed, so that the 

 stem, for the distance of several inches, is completely 

 deprived of its pith, and consequently withers and dies 

 before the end of the summer. In Europe one of these 

 slender Saperdas attacks the hazel-bush, and another the 

 twigs of the pear-tree, in the same way. 



The Lepturians, or LEPTURAD^E, constitute the third fam- 

 ily of the Capricorn-beetles. In most of them the body is 

 narrowed behind, which is the origin of the name applied 



