116 COLEOPTERA. 



of which it falls off in large flakes, and the tree perishes. 

 These grubs live between the bark and the wood, often in 

 great numbers together, and, when they are abojit to become 

 pupae, each one surrounds itself with an oval ring of woody 

 fibres, within which it undergoes its transformations. The 

 beetle is matured before winter, but does not leave the tree 

 until spring. It is the ribbed Rhagium, or 

 ' Rhagium Mneatum,* (Fig. 52,) so named be- 



cause it has three elevated longitudinal lines or 

 ribs on each wing-cover ; and it measures from 

 four and a half to seven tenths of an inch in 

 length. The head and thorax are gray, striped 

 with black, and thickly punctured ; the anten- 

 nas are about as long as the two forenamed parts of the body 

 together ; the thorax is narrow, cylindrical before and behind, 

 and swelled out in the middle by a large pointed wart or 

 tubercle on each side; the wing-covers are wide at the 

 shoulders, gradually taper behind, and are slightly convex 

 above ; they are coarsely punctured between the smooth ele- 

 vated lines, and are variegated with reddish ash-color and 

 black, the latter forming two irregular transverse bands ; the 

 under side of the body, and the legs, are variegated with dull 

 red, gray, and black. The gray portions on this beetle are 

 occasioned by very short hairs, forming a close kind of nap, 

 which is easily rubbed off. 



The Buprestians and the Capricorn-beetles seem evidently 

 allied in their habits, both being borers during the greater 

 part of their lives, and living in the trunks and limbs of trees, 

 to which they are more or less injurious in proportion to their 

 numbers. Some of the beetles in these two groups resemble 

 each other closely in their forms and habits. The resem- 

 blance between the slender cylindrical Saperdas and some 

 of the cylindrical Buprestians belonging to the genus Agrilus, 

 is indeed very remarkable, and cannot fail to strike a common 

 observer. Their larvae also are not only very similar in 



" Stemcorw lineatus of Olivier. 



