238 INDIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 



several specimens of S. 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 3 . 

 The genus Trypoxylon, many species of Crabro, Eu- 

 menes Parietiim, Latreille's genera Xylocopa, Chelostoma, 

 HeriadeS) Megachile and Anthophora, (all separated from 

 Apis, L.,) perforate posts and rails and other timber, to 

 form cells for their young b . 



The Linnean order Aptera furnishes another timber- 

 eating insect, a kind of wood-louse, though scarcely an 

 eighth of the size of the common one, (Limnoria tere- 

 brans of Dr. Leach,) which in point of rapidity of exe- 

 cution seems to surpass all its European brethren, and 

 in many cases may be productive of more serious injury 

 than any of them, since it attacks the wood-work of piers 

 and jetties constructed in salt-water, and so effectually, 

 as to threaten the rapid destruction of those in which it 

 has established itself. In December 1815 I was fa- 

 voured by Charles Lutwidge, esq. of Hull, with speci- 

 mens of wood from the piers at Bridlington Quay which 

 wofully confirm the fears entertained of their total ruin 

 by the hosts of these pygmy assailants that have made 

 good a lodgement in them, and which, though not so 

 big as a grain of rice, ply their masticatory organs with 

 such assiduity as to have reduced great part of the wood- 

 work into a state resembling honey-comb. One speci- 

 men was a portion of a three-inch fir plank nailed to 

 the North Pier about three years since, which is now 

 crumbled away to less than an inch in thickness in fact, 

 deducting the space occupied by the cells which cover 



a Linn. Trans, x. 403. 



b Kirby, Mon. Ap. Ang. i. 152-194. Latreille, Gen. iv. 161. 



