26 NEW YORK STATE MUSEUM 



deposit an egg. " She first made an incision in the bark close to the 

 sand ; then, turning her head upward, with her ovipositor she placed 

 the tgg in the bark nearly Va of an inch from the incision, the bark 

 having been started from the wood." 



Mr D. B. Wier states that the beetles copulate from lo days to two 

 weeks after reaching maturity, and soon after the females commence 

 to lay eggs. They are mostly deposited by night, usually from i to 

 lo inches from the ground. He observed that, where the beetles are 

 numerous, several females will often lay their eggs on the same tree 

 at different times, sometimes as long as two or more months apart. 

 He has found as many as 2y young borers of eight different sizes in 

 one tree in September. The eggs are said by Professor Chambers 

 to hatch in about 14 days, and Professor McMillan gives the time as 

 18 days. The period observed by Mr Junkins, June 15 to July 7, 

 was 22 days. Mr Buckminster believed that the females lay about 

 10 eggs, which hatch in about eight days, as stated by Gay. Dr 

 Saunders, in his Insects Injurious to Fruit, states that the beetle bores 

 into the bark and deposits an tgg in the cavity thus made; and Dr 

 Dimmock, writing of this species in the Standard Natural History, 

 observes that the cavity is filled with a cementlike secretion. 



The young borer, or lan^a, almost invariably works downward just 

 under the bark, making a somewhat sinuous channel with an oval 

 enlargement at a variable distance from the point where the Qgg was 

 laid. This oval chamber is evidently where the winter is passed. The 

 presence of the insect is readily detected later, or in spring, by the 

 rust-red borings which are ejected or forced out of the galleries [pi. i, 

 %• 3]- There has been some discussion as to whether the larva 

 actually ejects the borings. Dr Fitch was of the opinion that they 

 commonly had the aspect of not having been forced out by the worm 

 but of being thus crowded out because the mass under the bark 

 swelled when dampened by rain soaking through the dead tissues and 

 saturating the contents of the galleries. This explanation did not 

 satisfy us. Our observations have been that the older larvae of this 

 species always have more or less clear gallery space to travel about 

 in and this they keep clear for the time being. They connect the 

 interior workings with- the chambers under the bark where they 



