CHAPTER IX 



ASTUTE BEETLES AND WASPS 



Peculiar Gatherings of the Former. Foraging for Food for their 



Young by the Latter 



Representatives of the woodboring families 

 of beetles can most always be found on and 

 about a newly felled tree, in the spring, 

 summer and early autumn months of the 

 year. Through the possession of some pecu- 

 liar sense that apprises them of the fact that 

 a living tree, whether uprooted by storm or 

 felled by a woodsman's ax, supplies wood in 

 proper state to aid in propagation of their 

 species, they seek the tree for the purpose 

 of laying their eggs in the crevices of the 

 bark in a very short time after the tree is 

 down. Whether they discover the presence 

 of the fallen timber through the smell of the 

 sap so noticeable to humans about a freshly 

 felled tree, or are endowed with some sense 

 of recognition that is beyond human exper- 

 ience, I cannot say. I only know that within 

 a very short time after a tree is down in the 

 summer or early fall it is not unusual to find 

 certain beetles in great numbers in, around 

 and on the branches, big limbs and trunk of 

 the tree, where prior to that time a thorough- 

 search of the section thereabouts would not 

 have produced a single specimen. 



It would be a matter of interest to know 

 to what distance or over what extent of ter- 

 ritory the knowledge of the fallen tree is 

 spread. Information on which to form an 

 estimate is very slight. If in a section of 

 country where it is next to an impossibility 

 to find a longicorn or buprestid beetle be- 

 fore a tree is cut down and in ten hours or 

 so after we should see these insects about the 

 tree by the dozens, even hundreds, one would 

 naturally think that at least some of them 

 came from a long distance and that a wide 

 expanse of territory was necessary to furnish 

 so many visitors. While this might be true 

 it is possible that our inability to find them 

 in the first place is not because of non- 

 presence of the insects, but for the reason we 

 are not sufficiently clever to discover their 

 hiding places. 



In the basement of our quarters at Diablo, 

 Contra Costa county, a supply of freshly cut 

 firewood for use in the fireplace was stored 

 in the fall. The wood consisted of oak cut 

 in blocks or logs from good sized limbs. The 

 basement had one large window and a door- 

 way that was protected with a screen door. 

 On the first real warm day in the following 

 August I discovered while on a visit to the 

 basement four or five beetles on the glass 

 of the window running about as if trying to 

 find a place through which to make an exit 

 to the open air. I found them to represent 



two species of the Longicorn group, or long- 

 horns, and surmised that they came from the 

 wood above mentioned. An investigation of 

 the wood pile proved the surmise to be cor- 

 rect. I not only found the holes with the 

 fresh wood dust about the orifices, but dis- 

 covered one of the beetles just as it was 

 making its exit from the log. 



For more than two months thereafter this 

 particular kind of beetle continued to come 

 out of the wood then go either to the window 

 or the screen door, there to remain until they 

 found opportunity to get outside of the base- 

 ment or fell victims to the cyanide bottle of 

 a collector of Coleoptera. On several oc- 

 casions I noticed those beetles that chose the 

 doorway for way of escape endeavoring to 

 cut a hole in the wire screen by biting the 

 wire with their mandibles. Of course they 

 were unsuccessful. While their jaws were 

 sharp and strong enough to enable them to 

 bore a hole through the wood that had con- 

 fined them after emerging from the state of 

 pupa, they were unequal to the task of cut- 

 ting the small wires of the screen. However, 

 the effort apparently indicated the possession 

 on the part of the insect of sufficient degree 

 of mentality to recognize its unnatural im- 

 prisonment. Its confinement in the log of 

 wood after its change from the larvae form 

 to that of a mature beetle was a natural one 

 and undoubtedly its acts in effecting release 

 from the wooden cell were instinctive, but 

 the secondary confinement by the interposing 

 wire screen was probably something never be- 

 fore experienced by any generation of this 

 family of longicorns. Consequently the in- 

 stinctive powers of the insect alone could not 

 have been expected to give the impulse to a 

 rational act towards effecting its release. 

 Reason must have intervened. 



It is the theory of those who claim that 

 such insects have no power of reasoning that 

 all of their acts and operations are directed 

 solely by a hereditary instinct that gives the 

 impulse for the routine of conduct filling the 

 periods of their existence, and having once 

 performed any one of these acts they will not 

 and cannot be expected to repeat it. 



Such was the conclusion reached by that 

 great French naturalist. Henri Fabre, after 

 several experiments and observations with 

 the mason bee, Sphex, and some other mem- 

 bers of the wasp family. Notwithstanding 

 the care taken by Fabre in his observations 

 and the accuracy of his conclusions, the Peck- 

 hams of our own country experimenting with 



