INSECT ENEMIES OF WESTERN FORESTS 161 
polished table tops where these native woods were used as a base 
for veneer. A smaller brown species, Polycaon confertus Lec., also 
mines in the wood of these and other broadleaved shade and fruit 
trees in California and is sometimes responsible for the extensive 
killing of twigs and branches. 
The lead cable borer (Scobicia declivis Lec.) (17) is an omnivo- 
rous feeder in all sorts of seasoned hardwoods, and has been par- 
ticularly destructive by boring into alcohol or wine casks and into 
lead telephone cables. The adults are cylindrical dark brown or 
black beetles about one-fourth of an inch in length and have the 
head retracted under the thorax, giving them the appearance of bark 
beetles. 
CARPENTER ANTS 
Large black ants belonging to the genus Camponotus are called 
“carpenter ants” because of their habit of tunneling into the wood 
of stumps, logs, dead standing trees, or the dead interior of living 
trees, and even into 
the framework of 
houses, where they 
excavate large cavi- 
ties that they use for 
nests in which to rear 
their young. The 
wood is not eaten by 
the ants, but cast 
out in order to make 
room for the nests, 
causing little piles of 
wood fibers to collect 
below the entrance 
holes. Their excava- 
tions in wood are 
frequently so exten- 
sive as seriously to 
impair its structural 
value (fig. 81). In 
the Pacific North- 
west carpenter ant 
damage greatly ex- 
ceeds and to a large 
extent supplants that 
done by termites— 
the termite damage 
being much more 
prevalent farther 
south. These ants 
are general feeders, FIGURE 81. —Carpenter gust cen their work. (Natural 
including in their 
fare both animal food and sweets, their preferred items of food ap- 
pearing to be the honeydew excreted by aphids and the caterpillars of 
certain lycaenid butterflies. They have even been known to shelter 
the aphid eggs in their nest during the winter and carry them out 
and place them on plants to develop in the spring. 
136650°—38——11 
