100 LONDON INSECTS 



the bark comes away, not unlike the clean-picked back- 

 bone of a sole, excepting that as the grub grows and 

 needs a wider passage as he travels, the diverging ribs 

 are thickest at the end farthest from the spine. 



The ' Type- writing Beetle,' so named from a fancied 

 likeness of its irregular workings to letters, which does 

 much harm in the pine woods on the Continent, is 

 very much like the destructor, but devotes itself to firs 

 instead of elms. The ravages of the Type-writing 

 Beetle have at times been as serious as plagues of 

 Locusts. In the Harz forests alone, according to Kirby 

 and Spence, these Beetles for delivery from which, 

 by the bye, there was a special prayer in the old 

 German liturgies killed in one visitation as many as 

 a million and a half of fir-trees. 



In another year, it was said, the mines must have 

 been closed, and the country for the time ruined ; but 

 happily, just before it was too late, the Beetles took it 

 into their heads to migrate ' in swarms like bees ' into 

 other parts, where they were probably no more welcome. 



But compared with the much smaller insect, the 

 Phylloxera, a comparatively recent importation from 

 America, the Type-writing Beetle is a harmless creature. 

 A French writer, basing his calculations on official 

 statistics, lately estimated the damage done by these 

 tiny creatures in French vineyards only, during the 

 thirteen years from 1875 to 1888, at something like four 

 hundred million pounds sterling. 



Before saying good-bye to the poor old sick elms in 

 Kensington Gardens, it may be worth mentioning one 



