150 BULLETIN BROOKLYN ENTOM. SOC. VOL. VII. March & April 1885 ] 
Are Curculio Larvae Lignivorous? 
By Warren Knaus. 
This question is discussed in Prof. J. A. Lintner’s First Annual 
Report on the injurious and other Insects of the State of New York, on 
pages 258 and 259. Thomas Walsh thought the larvee of Sphenophorus 
sculptilis Uhlr., lived in decaying and moist wood. Mr. Lintner holds a 
different view, believing that the larva of this species does not differ from 
the habits of the family, these insects being entirely herbivorous,—quot- 
ing Westwood and C. V. Riley as authorities. Mr. Riley however is also 
quoted as agreeing with Walsh as to the habits of the species under dis- 
cussion there. 
While I do not wish to be understood as disputing such eminent 
testimony bearing on the food habits of these Coleoptera, my own ob- 
servations have led me to adopt a conclusion somewhat different con- 
cerning at least one genus placed very near to the Scolytidae. I refer to 
Wollastonia quercicola (Boheman). 
For the past three season I have taken this insect from Cottonwood — 
logs in a somewhat advanced state of decay. Cottonwood is the most 
abundant timber in the valley of the Smoky Hill River in this, Salina, 
County, and I have examined trunks of the trees used in buildings, 
which were completely honeycombed by a small wood boring larva. I 
first took this beetle in the season of. 1881, it appearing about the first 
week in June and continuing until July. 
I have invariablv taken this insect on or in, or in the immediate 
vicinity of Cottonwood logs or stumps. The present season I took about 
a dozen specimens from logs that had been used in a stable for the 
past seventeen years; a number were taken from the larval burrows, and 
numbers of small white fleshy larvae were also. observed in the same 
pieces of timber: these larvee I feel confident were those of W. guercicola, 
but as I found no pupe and did not continue my observation on their — 
transformations, I cannot speak with absolute certainty. ; 
I am still further strengthened in. the conviction that the larve of 
this insect are wood eating, by the fact that it has a close structural rela- 
tion to the Scolytidae. This is pointed out in Leconte and Horn’s 
Classification of North American Coleoptera, and the affinities of several 
genera (closely related to the one under discussion), with particular 
genera of Scolyfidae are specially noticed. Further observation, I trust, 
will remove all doubts as to the food habits of Wollastonia quercicola. 
