THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 189 
healthy, are making most wood, and the circulation of the sap 
is most free, it being also during the damp part of the year. 
I have, however, despite considerable investigation, been 
unable to get specimens of the egg, and so watch the deve- 
lopment of the larva from the earliest stages. Specimens of 
the larva have already been laid before the members of your 
Society, but I forward by this post also some specimens. In 
only three cases, about January or December, have I met 
with any insect in the bark, between the level of the ground 
and the roots, at all corresponding to the larger insect found 
in the wood. On examining those trees with larve in, with 
hardly any exception, we discover the bark eaten away, or 
rather, | should say, wanting, about the level of the ground; 
from this place to the entrance-hole of the borer in the forks 
of the roots there is always to be observed a more or less 
irregular channel or road cut in the bark leading from one to 
the other, and in this channel I discovered two of the three 
small specimens of larve mentioned above. The entrance- 
hole of the larva is very irregularly placed; sometimes it 
begins as an excavation along one of the roots at a fork in 
the rootlets ; sometimes it enters immediately under the first 
root, hardly below the ground. I have not noticed the entrance 
of the larva above ground, except in two instances, when there 
was a hole below the lowest primary in one case and the 
second primary in the other. I did not, however, satis- 
factorily determine that these were the same insect, or, even 
if so, they may be considered as accidental cases. The 
excavation of the wood of the tree by the larve need not be 
entered into, as every one must be well aware of their powerful 
mandibles and their unlimited appetites. How long the insect 
remains in the larva form I have not yet been able to judge; 
but in consequence of finding always two and sometimes three 
distinct sizes in the insects taken out of a hundred trees, 
I imagine not less than two years, and possibly so long 
as three. The first transformation at present I have only 
observed in October; but I am half inclined to think there is 
a double brood, and another transformation about May: as 
I was not in the colony at that time last year, having given 
my attention to the question since July last, I am looking 
forward next month to deciding this point, as unluckily we 
have many diseased trees to operate on. I enclosed with the 
larva formerly sent to you a specimen of the pupa; it was first 
