Woodworkers 



beetles, not only display considerable ingenuity in the 

 construction of their homes but are possessed of maternal 

 instincts foreign to most insects. In the spring, the 

 season when the thoughts of most animals are turned 

 towards parental duties, the mother Ambrosia beetles seek 

 out a suitable tree for their operations. Into this tree 

 they bore a horizontal tunnel, which in a short distance is 

 diverted vertically. The sawdust formed in the tunnelling 

 operations is for the most part pushed backwards through 

 the tunnel, and trickles in a fine stream down the tree 

 trunk a certain indication that work is going on within. 



On the completion of the first vertical tunnel the mother 

 beetle deposits a group of six eggs at its extremity and 

 closes the entrance with a little plug of damp sawdust ; 

 more vertical tunnels are made, and eggs are deposited 

 therein, and they are plugged in exactly the same manner. 

 Often the mother beetle will make nearly fifty of these 

 tunnels, with the result that those first formed contain 

 larvae long before she has finished her labours, for the 

 eggs hatch in a few days. Now these larvae, unlike those 

 of the death-watch, have very feeble jaws, quite incapable 

 of biting wood. 



A most wonderful Providence watches over the 

 youngsters, and in this manner. We mentioned that at 

 the entrance to every side tunnel the mother beetle placed 

 a plug of damp sawdust ; these plugs are so many doors 

 to so many rooms, all opening into a long passage, the 

 horizontal tunnel. As the operations of boring and egg- 

 laying are going on, the long passage, into which the side 

 doors open, becomes filled with a dark coloured fungus, a 

 fungus upon which the larval beetles feed. As soon as a 

 batch of eggs hatches, the mother beetle removes the plug 

 of sawdust, opens the door of the side chamber, and the 

 inmates are free to browse upon their fungus fare. 



How does the fungus find its way into the tunnel ? It 

 is placed there by the far-seeing mother beetle. As the 

 work of tunnelling proceeds, sap oozes from the sides of 



68 



