498 



COLEOPTEKA. 



formed by the larvae he found May 25th, several pink-orange 

 pupae, "invariably lying with their heads outwards ; their long 

 antennae folded over the wing-eases obliquely down on the 

 sides, passing beneath the posterior pair 

 of legs, a little beyond them and then 

 curving up over the breast, reach the 

 head." The beetle is related to L. alpha 

 Say, and is gray, with bands and spots of 

 blackish pubescence ; it is .25 of an inch 

 long. Two species of ichneumons were 

 found by Shimer to prey upon the beetle. 

 In Monohammus the antennae are of 

 great length. M. titillator Fabr. is brown 

 mottled with gray ; while a slenderer spe- 

 cies, M. scutellatus Say, of a peculiar dark 

 olive green, with a whitish scutellum, bores 

 in the white pine. 



The singular habits of the Girdler, Onci- 

 deres dngulatus Say (Fig. 489), have thus 

 been described by Professor Ilaldeman 

 in the Pennsylvania Farm Journal, vol. i, 

 p. 34. "This insect was first described 

 by Say in the Journal of the Academy of 

 Natural Sciences, vol. v, p. 272, 1825, and its 

 habits were discovered by us and published in 

 our 'Materials towards a History of the Col- 

 eoptera longicornia of the United States ;' Am. 

 Phil. Trans., vol. x. p. 52, 1837. 



"In our walks through the forest our atten- 

 tion was frequently drawn to the branches mid 

 main shoots of young hickory trees ((ana 

 alba), which were girdled with a deep notch in 

 such a manner as to induce an observer to be- 

 lieve that the object in view was to kill the 

 branch beyond the notch, and extraordinary as 

 it may appear, this is actually the fact, and the 

 operator is an insect whose instinct was implanted by the 

 Almighty power who crc:it fil it. and under such circumstances 

 that it could never have been acquired as a habit. The effect 



Fig. 489. 



