302 FAMILY CERAMBYCIDAE 



This beetle was first reported as destructive to sal by Mr. R. Thompson, 

 in his Report on Injurious Forest Insects in 1867. 



About 1889 the Director of the Imperial Forest School at Dehra Dun 

 forwarded specimens of the insect to the Indian Museum as 

 Life History. injurious to sal and Terminalia tomentosa. Neither of these 

 reports contains information as to the exact life history 

 of the insect, though they mention that the larvae were excessively common 

 in sal wood. Observations on this insect were carried out by myself between 

 1901 and 1909, aided by Mr. R. C. Milward in 1908. As a result the various 

 stages in the life-cycle have been worked out for the United Provinces and 

 Oudh, where the insect is a sal pest of the first importance. The beetles 

 make their appearance on the wing about the latter half of June and on into 

 July. The female, after the pairing with, the male, which takes place in dark 

 crevices of the bark or on the under-side of fallen logs or other shady 

 situations, deposits her eggs in little crevices of the bark of green fallen or 

 felled trees, or in standing green sickly trees. That green trees are used 

 was proved by an inspection of some large old standing ones in the 

 Mandal Range, west of the Patli Dun, which were reported by Mr. R. C. 

 Milward as dying under the attacks of an insect. These trees were full of the 

 grubs and maturing beetles, and were obviously being killed by the insect. 



The grubs on hatching out feed at first in the inner layers of the thick 

 bark, eating out shallow narrow galleries here. As soon as their mandibles 

 become stronger they leave the bark and eat out in the sapwood large, 

 broad, flat, irregular-shaped, longitudinal or transverse galleries. These 

 galleries may be as much as twelve inches or more in length, three inches in 

 breadth, and a quarter of an inch deep, grooving both bark and sapwood. 

 When the bark is thin this gallery is almost confined to the sapwood. 

 Whilst engaged in eating out this gallery, the grub bores at intervals two, 

 three, or more openings or aeration holes to the outside, these openings 

 increasing in size with that of the grub. When about half to two- 

 thirds grown, the larva leaves the outer sapwood and bores down 

 into the heart-wood, the tunnel going in at an angle and continuing for 

 a varying distance in the inner sap- and outer heart-wood till the grub is 

 full-grown. It then bores down into the older heart-wood and eats out a 

 chamber more or less parallel to the long axis of the tree. This chamber is 

 wider than the tunnel leading to it, is of varying width and length (as the 

 larvae when full-grown and the perfect insects vary in size considerably), 

 and forms the pupal chamber. A mass of triturated wood fibres forms a plug 

 at the bottom of the chamber, whilst the upper end is covered over with a 

 curious calcareous semi-cocoon or shell, concave on the inner surface, and 

 having the appearance of a brazil-nut on the outer. This covering, which 

 is hard and white, is made by the larva before changing to the pupal 

 form. It resembles the one made by Hoplocerambyx spinicornis and is 

 shown in fig. 210 (cf. also pi. iv). 



