Under date of February 27th, 1897, Hubbard wrote: 



"I found in Andreas canyon a thorax of Dinapate, in a pile of stream 

 drift, showing tliat the beetle occurs there. I finally left the main canyon 

 and crawled over a divide into a still smaller valley, also very difficult, 

 but within half a mile I found a group of seven of the most magnificent 

 palms, TO to 80 feet high, and clothed with dead fans from foot to crown 

 so that they looked like huge towers. It is the first time I have seen this 

 magnificent tree in full size and with all the fans still clinging to it. It 

 seems almost beyond the strength of a man to penetrate tliese dense 

 covermgs of dead fans which cover the trunks 8 to 10 feet thick on every 

 side so that the diameter of the covered trunk is often 20 feet. I found 

 in this little side canyon among the group of living palms a single huge 

 dead faUen trunk which had lain prostrate many years and had been 

 covered up with grape vines and leaves of the cotton woods. 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 pupal 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 pre- 

 served two small curiously twisted chitinous claspers which were within 

 the abdomen. 



"Yesterday, accompanied by an Indian, I visited again Palm canyon 

 and made straight for a certain palm tree which I had observed on my 

 first visit, 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.- No living 

 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 of leaf bases. 



"In this young palm examined by me the trunk was of very large 

 diameter, and the first chips we removed with our axes showed galleries 

 of Dinapate of full size and filled with frass quite fresh and light in color, 

 together with evidently much older galleries of smaller size in which the 

 frass had turned dark with age. I found some of the small borings at 

 their beginning under the fibres of the leaf bases, where they were not 

 larger than a friction match. We finally uncovered a living larva of Dina- 

 pate, full-grown and apparently forming its pupa cell or preparing to 

 do so. After several hours' work we secured four specimens, only one 

 of which could be taken out uninjured, the other three specimens being 

 more or less cut to pieces or crushed between the tough fibres. All these 

 larvae were thoroughly dormant and very flaccid; evidently they had eaten 

 nothing for some months. 



"I feel sure that they are more than one year and probably more 

 than two years old, but no "doubt they would have issued by July or August 

 of this year. All the larvae in this trunk appear to lie not deeper than 

 one or two inches beneath the surface of the wood. It is possible, how- 

 ever, that they may not issue until next year, and for this reason I hesi- 

 tate to have the tree cut down. The fibres of the wood are still moist 

 and very light in color, showing very slight fermentation except where the 



