Insect Ravages in Woodlands. 



163 



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tend to limit these injuries. One of these is 

 a carnivorous beetle, that hatches out at about 

 the same time. Although they have wings, 

 they attack them on the ground, and mount 

 upon the trees to seize their prey. 



654. Usually beetles of the general form 

 shown in the foregoing engraving, with long 

 sharp jaws and very rapid movements, belong 

 to the carnivorous class. Something may be 

 done to prevent the injuries of the worms above 

 described, by scraping off the eggs from the 

 bark. They are always deposited on the out- 

 side trees of a forest, and never within it. 



665. Of bark-boring insects the conifers have 

 an unusually large share, there being, perhaps, 

 no species that is entirely free from their rav- 

 ages. They are sometimes very symmetrical 

 in their work, the bark, externally, showing a 

 row of holes at equal intervals, and, between 

 the wood and bark, burrows running sometimes 

 horizontally, at other times vertically or ob- 

 liquely, with numerous branching burrows that 

 seldom or never run into one another, however 

 nearly they may approach. 



656. The main stem of these burrows is 

 made by the parent-insect, who, as she ad- 

 vances, deposits her eggs on the sides. From 

 these the larvae hatch, and, because small, the 

 passage which they make is at first narrow. It 

 widens as they grow in size, and at the end may 

 expand into a little chamber. When the worm , 

 has finished this stage of its growth, it becomes 

 a pupa, and finally eats out into the open air, as a perfect insect. 

 Its natural size is shown by the side of the above engraving. 



657. The immense numbers in which these insects appear in some 

 years, render their ravages very destructive, and as they often pro- 

 duce two broods in a year, a single insect may, in three or four 

 seasons, when the increase is not checked, multiply in enormous 

 quantities. 



I. Insect Ravages under 

 the Bark pE Trees. 



