Occasional Notes. 139 



Surinam. The beetles were submitted to Mr. C. O. 

 Waterhouse, the Coleopterist of the British Museum 

 of Natural History, who has kindly informed me that 

 the "majority of them are the now well known 

 Xylehorus perforans — Wollaston, described by him 

 as Tomiciis perforans from y^^.^G\x:^^=^Bostrichus tes- 

 taceus of Walker from Cey\on=Xyleborus affinis of 

 Eichhoff from Cuba, N. America, Brazil, etc., etc.^' 



This little beetle is a serious pest in a variety of ways, 

 two extreme cases being the damage of beer casks in 

 India, and the destru61;ion of sugar-cane in St. Vincent, 

 West Indies. It has not, up to the present, been recognised 

 in Guiana as being destructive to the cocao, but in the 

 dead and hard wood of various trees, in the swamped 

 land above the Great Falls of the Demerara river, I 

 have found them in considerable quantities. 



The first stages of their method of attacking the cocao 

 are not yet ascertained — the cases not having been really 

 studied ; and this is essential before any really effe6live 

 steps can be taken for prote6lion. When the trees begin 

 to fail, their young shoots and the branches are found to be 

 simply riddled through and through with perforations, 

 and stocked throughout with the adult beetles and their 

 grubs in various stages. 



A Fungus-covered Moth. — A most interesting case 

 of fungoid growth was lately brought under my notice by 

 the Revd. Henry Taylor of the Upper Berbice River. 

 This consisted of a large Sphinx moth, Dilophonota 

 ello, which was covered throughout by the mycelium of 

 a fungus, the hyphae having taken over the entire 

 substance, and grown out from the outer covering layer 



S2 



