﻿MELD AND FOREST. 15 7 



On the last day of October 1876, or the first day of November, Mrs. 

 Best had occasion to open a bottom drawer that had never been pre- 

 viously used, and was surprised to find a large quantity of finely granu- 

 lated debris or woody cuttings ''like fine sawdust," as she described 

 it. and upon examination she discovered that a portion of that side, 

 and a large portion of the floor, or bottom of the Cabinet, had been 

 excavated in irregular longitudinal burrows, with nothing but a thin 

 shell of wood on the outside, which could be broken in, in some 

 places, by the ordinary pressure of the thumb. On further exploration 

 of this spongy wood, in one of the cavities, a single specimen of Ily- 

 lotnipes bullatus, Hald, was found. The individual is a female, with 

 a prominently exserted ovipositor, and was dead. The cabinet is 

 made of black-walnut, but the drawers, and the inner casings are made 

 of white-pine. 



The insect was given to me, and I subsequently made a further ex- 

 ploration of the infested parts of the cabinet, but no other specimen 

 was found,' and therefore it seems conclusive that this solitary indi- 

 vidual had been burrowing in that cabinet for fifteen or sixteen years 

 at least ; for there seems to be no room for the supposition that the 

 egg had been deposited there after the cabinet was manufactured. I 

 have never captured either Hylotrupes bullatus or bajulus in this locality, 

 except in the vicinity of lumber yards, and therefore I have in- 

 ferred that they have all been brought here from the pine regions, in tim- 

 ber or sawed lumber; and if so, the eggs of these insects must have 

 been deposited in these articles before they were brought here, if not - 

 in the trees as they stood in their native forests, and therefore, that the 

 dongevity of the species I refer to may have been greater than the period 

 I have suggested. I do not think however, that the normal longevity 

 of bullatus is necessarily to be regarded as sixteen years ; at the same 

 time it is difficult to account for its long continuance in the wood of 

 this cabinet, when a transverse cut of an eighth of an inch on either 

 side would have extricated it from its confinement. Nor does is seem 

 reasonable to suppose that the females became fertilized within the 

 wood, and that one generation had succeeded another, even if a larger 

 number had been found, instead of a single specimen. But, what 

 were the causes of its retardation, if it was abnormally retarded? was 

 it the absence of the necessary humidity? was it the quality of its 

 food ? We can hardly suppose it was the absence of the normal tern- 



