347 
the starting point, and in consequence has more gnawing to do than if 
it had not made this mistake in the preliminary survey. The channel 
slopes in a very little from either side, not unlike the notch made by a 
beaver in gnawing off a tree. 
The eggs are deposited beneath the bark of the girdled branches, 
and just at the base of side shoots or aborted buds. Usually there is 
but one at a shoot, but in case the latter is large there may be two or 
three. The aperture of the puncture is somewhat oval in form, being 
slightly flattened on the under side. Immediately beneath it, and 
capped with a gummy substance for protection, is the egg, a pale white 
elongated body, with a longitudinal diameter about three times as great 
as the transverse. It lies just under the bark, or in some cases, 
between the layers of the bark. The number of eggs thus deposited 
by a single female varies somewhat. Of seven branches examined, 
two had eight punctures each, two nine, and three fourteen. The 
girdler seems to be very careful to place all its eggs along the main 
axis of the limb. In no case was there a puncture on a side shoot, no 
matter how many twigs or buds it might have. 
These eggs were found to hatch in .from three to four weeks after the 
branches had dropped, the larva? appearing as very small cream-colored 
footless grubs. As these larvae are still very small at this writing 
(November 12), they will doubtless pass the winter in this state, feed 
and grow rapidly when spring comes, transform in mid-summer, and 
emerge as a perfect insect about the first of August. 
A detailed description of the beetle is hardly necessary, as it is 
figured and described in several reports on insects injurious to forest 
trees, and in horticultural reports. To those, however, who might not 
have such report at hand, a means of roughly identifying, it may be 
acceptable. It has the characteristic long antenna? of most Ceramby- 
cidaB, is sub-cylindrical in shape, and varies from about eight to eleven- 
sixteenths of an inch in length, the males being smaller than the 
females. The general color is a reddish, ash-sprinkled brown, with a 
broad ashy belt nearly midway across the elytra. The thorax is also 
ashy, contrasting slightly with the color of the head and the humeral 
belt. Numerous ochreous spots dotting the elytra can be seen by close 
inspection. 
The drawing (after Riley) figured in most reports on the insect is not 
quite true to life in one or two points. The girdler at work should be 
located on that portion of the branch containing the punctures for 
ovipositing, and not on the stub that will remain on the tree. The egg, 
also, should be nearly twice as long as figured, in order to preserve the 
true proportions when based on the transverse diameter shown in the 
drawing. 
It ought not to be very difficult to get rid of these primers in a yard 
or park, for one has only to carefully collect and burn all fallen or 
lodged branches in order to destroy all the eggs and larva' for the next 
season's brood. 
