INSECTS OF THE GARDEN 



193 



of three inches. It attacks the roots of grapevines, and 

 when a vine dies of no apparent cause its roots should be 

 searched for this destructive pest. The adult is a brown- 

 ish black beetle, with short, heavy jaws, commonly about 

 an inch and a half in length. It begins to appear about 

 the middle of July. A near relative of this beetle is the 

 tile-horned Prionus, P. imbricornis, which has a similar life 

 story and attacks the grape in the same way. 



The Divaricated Buprestis, Bjiprcstis divaricata. — The 

 adult is a bronze or copper-colored beetle, a little less than 

 an inch in length, the larva of which attacks the cherry 

 and not infrequently the peach. The wing covers are 

 elongated into blunt, divaricated tips, from which the 

 name is derived. 



Two important borers attack the strawberry : the straw- 

 berry root borer, Anarsia lineatella (which often destroys 

 also the tender twigs of the peach), is a minute moth ; 

 and the strawberry crown borer is a beetle, Tyloderma 

 fragarice, belonging to curculios. The remedy for these 

 consists in digging up the plants as soon as they wilt and 

 burning them root and all. 



The Grape-Cane Borer, Amphicerus bicaiidatiis. — If a young 

 shoot on a grapevine suddenly wilts and dies, you will prob- 

 ably find it hollowed out near its junction with the vine, 

 and, within this hollow, a cylindrical brown beetle about 

 one-half inch long. Sometimes all the new growth on a 

 vine is killed in this way, and twigs of pear, apple, plum, 

 peach, forest, shade, and ornamental trees may be found 

 to contain the same pest. The beetle is single brooded, 

 the eggs being laid from March to May, or June, accord- 

 ing to latitude. The larvae develop in dying or diseased 



