104 | October, 
There is another point which seems important, that is, the position 
of the stump. I have rarely found them in stumps on level ground, but 
nearly always in those on a steep slope. This probably arises from the 
earth above yielding a supply of moisture to the latter, whilst there is 
sufficient drainage below, and the wood is thus kept of a proper damp- 
ness. It must moreover arise to some extent from stumps on a slope 
presenting on the lower side an abundant surface, from which the beetles 
ean make their attack; as they always bore inwards horizontally or 
slightly upwards, they thus command nearly the whole stump ; whereas 
with a stump whose surface is level with the ground they can command 
very little of it. 
During July and August the beetles emerges from the pupal state, 
the greater number during the last week in July, and at this period 
they commence their burrows; on July 15th I found such a burrow 
nearly three inches in depth. Occasionally an odd burrow is to be 
found, but usually the burrows are in colonies, and as many as fifty 
entrances may be found on the side of a stump, scattered over a surface 
twelve to fifteen inches wide and four or five high. The burrows are 
often begun on a smooth surface, but usually any little hollow or ir- 
regularity is taken advantage of, in commencing the burrow. I have a 
fine specimen, in which a strip of bark had been removed from the side 
of a large root, and the margin was cicatrising ; in the angle all round 
this surface the entrances of burrows were closely placed, only one or 
two others being present at other points. The burrow from its mouth 
on the surface of the stump is a perfectly clean-cut cylinder. 
Each burrow is tenanted from its commencement by a pair of 
beetles. Both beetles and full-grown larve feed on the wood, and 
when they are doing so, they eject little rounded nodules of frass, which 
have obviously passed through their alimentary canals. In the case of 
Hylesinus fraxini, and several other Xylophaga, I have satisfied myself 
that the parent beetles eat the removed material when they are forming 
their burrows of oviposition. With Platypus, however, this is not the 
case. In forming its burrows it does not eat the removed material, and, 
instead of the end of the burrow being rounded, it is at this period 
flat, z.e., a plane at right angles to the axis of the burrow; and the 
ejected frass is not found in the little rounded pellets afterwards ob- 
served, nor in little lenticular bitten pieces, which appears the only 
other alternative, but in very fine splinters, most of them of a length 
equal to the diameter of the burrow. I may remark here that this 
burrow is always made across the fibres of the wood. The ejected frass, 
which forms a little heap outside the burrow, looks very different from 
that afterwards thrown out. Both sometimes accumulate to such an 
