London Insects. 155 



have their under wings crossed and those which fold 

 them straight like a fan straight wings and is all 

 the better prepared to admit the necessity for separat- 

 ing the two orders, when one is told that there are 

 even more important differences in their earlier stages, 

 the true cross-winged Beetles being, like Butterflies, 

 subject, as a rule to complete the Qrthoptera y only to 

 partial metamorphosis. 



Unless they have all vanished in the last clearance 

 of trees, there are very good specimens to be seen 

 in Kensington Gardens of the curious symmetrical 

 workings of a small tree-destroying Beetle named, 

 from the mischief it can do, " Scolytus destructor." 

 The female forces herself under the rough outer 

 bark of elms and eats her way through the soft 

 tissue between it and the hard wood, dropping her 

 eggs, at regular intervals, to the right and left as 

 she goes. 



Each Grub as it is hatched begins working on its 

 own account, and guided by some unaccountable 

 instinct, or perhaps by the position in which the 

 egg is laid, drives a shaft of its own outwards from 

 the centre passage bored by the mother, in a line 

 parallel to that of the brother or sister next to it. 

 The result is a grooved pattern to be seen when, as 

 is sure to follow, the bark comes away, not unlike 

 the clean picked backbone 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 



M 2 



