164 THE ORCHID REVIEW. 
DENDROBIUM BEETLE. 
From the article in your last number it would appear that though the 
larvee of this insect are only too well known, the perfect insect is “wanted” 
by English naturalists. I therefore enclose one which I caught yesterday 
hiding under the rhizome of Lelia tenebrosa. This plant was growing close 
to a Dendrobi Phal 
Schreederianum, whose stem (enclosed) 
showed the hole from which it had issued, and whose leaves had shewn on 
the previous day that on these it had made its first meal. I enclose a leaf 
showing its peculiar method of feeding. This was done during the first 
night after its escape from the chrysalis. The next night it paid attention 
to the Lelia, eating the leaf in the same way as that of the Dendrobe, and 
also nibbling the points off two buds, quite spoiling them, to say nothing of 
devouring two roots, each about half-an-inch long. I think, therefore, I 
may truly say that this beetle is, though beautiful, beastly, and as much a 
pest in the perfect state as in that of larvadom. L. C. R. THRING. 
[The Beetle sent is a large and very different insect to that sent by Mr. 
Wrigley, but is not yet identified.—Ep. ] 
Since I sent you the beetle-infested pseudobulb of Dendrobi ri 
nopsis (p. 136), my gardener has found many more plants attacked by this 
insect. Most of the infested pseudobulbs were at once burned, but several were 
handed over to my sister’s gardener for observation and experiment, while 
others were placed under a bell-glass by my man, with similar objects in view- 
Tt has been proved that the perfect beetle issues from its bore-hole 
during the hottest part of the day, and flies about with the greatest rapidity 
and ease, settling on any pseudobulb which it may care to visit. Towards 
evening the insects all disappear, either into their old holes or into new 
ones bored into fresh pseudobulbs, or into fresh portions of an infested one. 
I have proved that these beetles fly about my Dendrobium house, because 
one was found walking up an unattached pseudobulb, and my attention was 
immediately called to it. When I first saw it, boring had just commenced, 
and went on at a very rapid rate, the borings being thrown out by the hind 
legs of the beetle as work went on. | carefully watched the insect for 
exactly half-an-hour, 
pseudobulb. From careful observations I find that the beetle usually bores 
right across the pseudobulb, until the outer skin is reached, which it never 
Pierces, but then begins to excavate a chamber in which to produce its 
larve, and in the end I Presume it dies there, when its task is completed. A 
From these imperfect observations and experiments it is plain that “ 
beetle is a very serious pest when once it has established itself in any 
Orchid house, for it breeds so rapidly, and spreads so much, that in a very 
short time a collection of Dendrobes may be seriously damaged or destroyed: 
when it was lost to sight, having buried itself in the 
