BULLETIN 1107, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



n 



line hangers would eliminate injury, but soon reports from other 

 parts of the country demonstrated that this was not so. 



In August, 1904, similar damage was reported from Corsicana 

 and Fort Worth, Tex. In the next year boring of cables in the South 

 Atlantic and Gulf States was reported. 6 Damage to cables at Wat- 

 sonville, Calif., was reported in 1906. 



For a number of years following no reports of insect damage were 

 received, probably because the magnitude of the injury was not 



Fig. 4. — The California lead-cable borer {ScoMoia declivis) : a, Adult beetle ; b, left man- 

 dible of adult beetle; c, sexual differences in adult beetles, a, Enlarged 13J times; 

 b, enlarged 26 times ; c, greatly enlarged. 



large from a maintenance standpoint and the cause of the injury 

 had been discovered and made known to the plant forces. It appears 

 from data recently collected that trouble was experienced in Browns- 

 ville, Tex., in 1912, and in Los Angeles, Calif., in 1913. The insect 

 damage was not, however, large in comparison with other causes of 

 cable trouble. In the year ending March 31, 1916, insect injury was 

 reported as the cause of about one-fifth of all aerial cable trouble 



6 During the same period scattered cases of the destruction of fuses by insects were re- 

 ported from several States. In these cases several of the beetles causing the damage were 

 secured and identified as Dermestes lardarius L. 



