118 WOODY PLANTS OF MASSACHUSETTS. 
called Quercus coccifera, was for many ages used for the pur- 
pose of communicating crimson and scarlet colors. This con- 
tinued to be the case until its place was taken by cochineal, 
the product of another similar insect, found on a species of 
cactus which is a native of Mexico. 
As growing in New England, none of the forest trees have 
more numerous enemies of the insect race than the oaks. Their 
leaves are fed on by the slug-caterpillar, (Limacodes; Harris’s 
Report on Insects, p. 304,) and by the caterpillar of the hag- 
moth, (Limacédes pithécium, ib. 304); they are rolled up and 
destroyed by the leaf-rollers, (Trtrices, ib. 347); and devoured 
by the scarred Melolontha, (Melolintha variolosa, ib. 30), a 
beautiful beetle of a hght brown color. The juices of the small 
twigs are sucked by the white-lined tree-hopper, (Membracis 
univittata, ib. 180); their leaves are sometimes stripped by the 
tent-caterpillar, (Clisiocampa sylvatica, ib. 271); by those of 
Petasia minisira, (Drury, I, 28); by those from which pro- 
ceed the beautiful Luna and Polyphémus moths*; by the 
tawny caterpillar of the large Cératocampa wnperidlis, (ib. 1, 
17; plate ix, 1 and 2); by the stinging caterpillar of the rare 
Saturnia Maia, (Harris, 285); and more extensively than by 
any other, by the oak caterpillar, (Dryocampa, ib. 291). 
The oak~pruner, (Elaphidion putdtor, ib. 81,) a long-horned 
beetle of a dull-brown color, lays its egg in the axil of a leaf, 
or of a small twig, near the extremity of a branch. The grub, 
when hatched, penetrates to the pith, and then contmuces its 
course towards the body of the tree, devouring the pith, and 
forming a cylindrical burrow several inches in length. It ends 
by severing the wood of the branch, leaving it to be broken off 
and precipitated to the ground by the autumnal winds. By this 
untimely pruning, the ground is often strown with branches, 
some of them an inch in diameter and five or six feet in length. 
If these are collected in autumn and burnt before the ensuing 
spring, the development of the beetles is prevented, and future 
evil guarded against. 
* Harris, pp 282—3. Dr. Harris is of opinion that the strong silk, forming the 
large cocoons of these insects, might be substituted for that of the common silk- 
worm, 
