Report of the State Entomologist 349 



trees were seen to be dying and I commenced to pull them up (pre- 

 sumably about the middle of May, when inquiry was first made of the 

 insect), the ground beneath was noticed to be covered with sawdust, 

 and examining for the cause I found the trees full of holes. Sitting 

 down and watching the holes I saw the dust dropping out of them. 

 I only saw one of the beetles out of the holes and that was walking 

 around on the tree. At the bottom of the holes they have made a 

 side-cut and lined it with a white substance for their young to eat. 

 If you take your knife you will find this side-cut and the eggs, if they 

 have not hatched; if they have, then the young will be there. Pro- 

 fessor Lewis of the Union School examined a limb and found the side- 

 cut full of eggs. 



" I send a short piece of the body of a tree, that you may see that 

 they like the trunk as well as the limbs. 



" The tree leafed out, but in a few days the leaves wilted. I car- 

 ried a couple of the trees to the Farmers' meeting at Cambria Center, 

 which was held a day or two after I found the insects in them." (The 

 meeting was on May 25th.) 



I am sorry to have to state that pressing engagements prevented 

 my examination of the infested material sent me, and the opportunity 

 for examining the eggs, if present, and the young and their feeding 

 habits was lost. There must, however, have been some error in the 

 observations as reported to me, for instead of the young beetles 

 occurring in association with the eggs, it should have been the larvse — 

 or grubs, as generally known. Possibly the pupae may have been 

 mistaken for eggs. 



In the latter part of September — 26th — there were discovered upon 

 the hearth-tiles of my office, where* the bundle of infested branches 

 had been placed at the time of its reception, a number of beetles that 

 had emerged — ten males and ten females, most of which were alive. 

 Cutting into a few of the burrows, some of them disclosed the peculiar 

 white lining above referred to, but no living presence. A few words 

 in reference to this white substance : It was of a yellowish-white color, 

 solid, exceeding in thickness that of an ordinary sheet of writing 

 paper, rather smooth when apparently undisturbed, but quite rough- 

 ened where it had probably been more or less eaten. In a letter 

 recently received from Miss Ormerod, the accomplished entomologist 

 of the Royal Agricultural Society of England, in mentioning serious 

 ravages on plum trees in England during the past year from Xyleborus 

 dispar — possibly identical with our X. pyri [*] — Schmidberger is 



[*It has since been ascertained that the two are identical, and the name of i)y>n will 

 have to give way to the earlier one of dispar.] 



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