HORN-TAILS. 535 



a fir-tree in Bewdley Forest, Worcestershire, England, was 

 found to be so intersected by the burrows of these grubs, 

 as to be fit for nothing but firewood; and that the winged 

 insects continued to come out of it, at the rate of five, six, 

 or more each day, for the space of several weeks. Mr. 

 Marsham states, on the authority of Sir Joseph Banks, 

 that several specimens of Urocerus gigas were seen to 

 come out of the floor of a nursery in a gentleman's house, 

 to the no small alarm and discomfiture of both nurse and 

 children. The grubs must therefore have existed in the 

 boards or timbers before they were employed in building, 

 and these materials would not have been used if in a de- 

 cayed state. The sexes of most of these insects differ con- 

 siderably in size and color, and in the shape of their body 

 and of their hind legs. There are not many different kinds, 

 but they are very prolific, and abound in mountainous dis- 

 tricts, and in temperate climates, where forests of pines 

 and firs prevail. A new order was proposed for their 

 reception by Mr. Macleay, and was named Bomboptera, on 

 account of the humming sound that they make in flying. 

 Their young partake of the nature of the wood-eating 

 grubs of the Capricorn beetles, which therefore they may 

 be said to represent, as the saw-flies do some of the leaf- 

 eating insects of the same order. 



Eight of the UROCERID^E are enumerated in my " Cata- 

 logue of the Insects of Massachusetts," including two kinds 

 of Xiphydria, which are now known to belong to the same 

 family. 



In the autumn of 1826, Major E. M. Bartlett, of North- 

 ampton, " found, on the body of one of his almost lifeless 

 pear-trees, a dead insect, about one inch and a half long, 

 attached to the tree by its awl or borer, of about the same 

 length, near an inch of which was fast in the hard wood ; 

 and there were several deep punctures near it, evidently 

 made by the same instrument, and in some of them eggs 

 were deposited." Not long afterwards Major Bartlett found 



