gg ENTOMOLOGICAL NEWS. [April 



found a group of seven of the most magnificent palms, 70 to 

 Sd feet high, and clothed with dead fans from foot to crown so 

 that they looked like huge towers. It is the first time 1 have 

 seen this magnificent tree in full size and with all the fans still 

 clinging to it. It seems almost beyond the strength of man to 

 penetrate these dense coverings of dead fans which cover the 

 trunksSor 10 feet tliick on every side so that the diameter of the 

 covered trunk is often 20 feet. I found in this little side canon 

 among the group of living palms a single hu'^e deatl fallen 

 trunk which had lain prostrate many years and had been 

 covered up with grape vines and leaves of the cottonwodcls. 

 This trunk was so entirely disintegrated that I was able to 

 pull it away in pieces with my hands. It was bored in' every 

 direction with Dinapate galleries, and I had at last the good 

 fortune to find, still in its pupa cell, a dead specimen of the 

 beetle, the chitin of which was still perfect, but every ligament 

 dissolved away so that the different sclerites adhered loosely 

 in the surrounding sawdust. I found the specimen to be a 

 male and preserved two small curiously twisted chitinous 

 claspers which were within the abdomen. 



Yesterday accompanied by an Indian I visited again Palm 

 canon and made straight for a certain palm tree which I had 

 observed on my first yisit, but too late in the day for a close 

 examination. This is a young tree, not over 20 feet high, and 

 still retains its clothing of fans. It is dead but the bud leaves 

 are still in place. It has evidently been killed by something, 

 and I cannot help suspecting that this has been done by the 

 females of Dinapate before depositing their eggs. Xo liciiiff 

 tree is ever attacked by them, nor do they enter any trunk 

 that has been long dead or fallen or cut down. I suspect that 

 the female cannot deposit her eggs in any trunk deprived ol 

 leaf bases. 



In this young palm examined by me the trunk was of \'ery 

 large diameter, and the first chips we removed with our axes 

 showed galleries of Dinapate of full size and filled with frass 

 (juite fresh and light in color, together with evidently much 

 older galleries of smaller size in which the frass had turned 

 dark with age. 1 found some of the small Iwrings at their 

 beginning under the fibres of the leaf bases, where they were 

 not larger than a friction match. We finally uncovered a 



