layer. It may remain in one place, making a flat, irregular- 

 shaped chamber or channel; but more often the tuimel extends 

 around the branch or stem nearly or quite girdling it. Frequently, 

 stems are so well inhabited that they are fairly honeycombed by 

 tunnels. The larva works in the tunnels just beneath the bark 

 until nearly ready to pupate, when it bores at an angle into the 

 wood until the heart is reached. Here the little larva turns 

 head downward and changes to a pupa. While the grub 

 is tunneling, the chips, splinters, excrement of the larva and the 

 exuded sap of the tree are forced out of the mouth of the tunnel; 

 and these exudations enable the observer to tell in which part of 

 the stem the insect is working. When the larva is busy in the 

 cambium layer, these castings are brown or black and the splinters 

 they contain are very fine; but the matter thrown out when the 

 heart wood is reached is clean, usually white, and contains longer, 

 thicker splinters than that from the sap wood. The pupa at 

 first differs little from the larva, but wings and legs gradually 

 develop, and in about two weeks the adult insect emerges, a 

 beetle very similar in appearance to the ordinary plum curculio. 

 The beetle is dull black in color but marked with whitish scales 

 on the rear third of the wing covers, on part of the thighs and 

 beneath the front part of the body. These collections of scales 

 give the appearance of whitish spots or bands on these parts of 

 the insect. The beetles are sluggish, walking rather than running, 

 and depending for safety on the curculio habit of dropping to the 

 ground when disturbed, where they remain motionless and with 

 lep curled up close to the body. 



Practically all the beetles will have emerged by 



Feeding the last of July, so they are most numerous during 



habits of this month and August; but all do not die until 



beetle. well along in the fall. They are voracious 



feeders, puncturing the bark in numerous places 

 and eating the tender tissue beneath. For the first ten days 

 they feed on the one-year-old branches; and one observation 

 seems to show that such wood is a necessity for them at this time. 

 Beetles developed in a breeding cage, in which there was only the 

 old wood from which they had emerged, appeared dead after 

 two or three days, but revived when put on a diet of young twigs. 

 This is probably the ripening period for egg laying and this new 



