REPORT OF THE STATE ENTOMOLOGIST I913 27 



This insect is credited by Burke with having caused the death 

 of a large amount of hemlock timber throughout the Appalachian 

 and Northeastern States. About 1900 we received reports of dying 

 hemlocks from near Syracuse. An investigation of burned areas 

 in the Adirondacks during early July 1903 showed that beetles 

 were then ovipositing in dying and dead trees on tracts near Big 

 Moose which had been swept by fire April 30th. An examination 

 on August 10th resulted in finding some trees, untouched in July, 

 infested by the borers. This species has also been recorded from 

 spruce, though no records of serious injury by it to this tree have 

 come to our notice. 



Description. The beetle is about three-eighths of an inch long 

 and has a dark metallic color with grayish reflections above the 

 mouth. The head, thorax and wing covers are marked with some- 

 what coarse, irregular, transverse punctures slightly resembling the 

 graining of morocco leather. Each wing cover bears three more 

 or less distinct, nearly circular or lenticular-shaped, yellowish or 

 white spots. 



Pupa. Length, three-eighths of an inch, moderately stout, flat- 

 tened, and of the ordinary Buprestid shape. The older pupa shows 

 a distinct infuscation of the eyes, labium, mandibles and the basal 

 portion of the anterior and mid tibiae. The nearly mature pupa 

 shows most of the color of the beetle, the wing covers apparently 

 darkening last. 



Larva. Length five-eighths of an inch, white, moderately slender, 

 the second thoracic segment distinctly "enlarged and with yellowish 

 brown thickenings dorsally and ventrally. The mouth parts of the 

 head are more or less fuscous. 



Life history. The beetle is mostly a midsummer species occur- 

 ring in New York State the latter part of June and during July, 

 though Dr A. D. Hopkins records taking the adults in West Virginia 

 late in March and during May, June and July. Specimens reared 

 under insectary conditions began issuing April 4th, appeared in 

 numbers April 17th to 28th and continued to emerge until May 

 14th — a total of nearly seven weeks. Beetles in the State col- 

 lection and taken in the open bear dates from the last of June to 

 the latter part of July. 



The eggs are evidently laid in crevices of the bark, sometimes 

 in pairs, since the young larvae make slender, sinuous galleries 

 diverging from one point in the inner bark, the presumably com- 

 mon entrance of the two. The older larvae excavate broader and 



