178 INDIEECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 



borers are the Capricorn beetles ^ including tbe Fabrician 

 genera of Prionus, Ceramhyx, Lamia^ Stenocorus, Leptura, 

 Rhagium, Gnoma, Saperda, Callidium~, and Clytus, The 

 larva of these, as soon as hatched, leaves its first station be- 

 tween the bark and wood, and begins to make its way into 

 the solid timber (some of them plunging even into the iron 

 heart of the oak), where it eats for itself fatuous paths, at its 

 first starting perhaps not bigger than a pin's head, but gradu- 

 ally increasing in dimensions as the animal increases in mag- 

 nitude, till it attains in some instances to a diameter of one 

 or two inches. Only conceive what havoc the grub of the 

 vast Prionus giganteus must make in a beam! Percival is 

 probably speaking of this beetle, when, in his account of 

 Ceylon, he tells us, " There is an insect found here which 

 resembles an immense overgrown beetle. It is called by us 

 a carpenter, from its boring large holes in timber, of a re- 

 gular form, and to the depth of several feet, in which, 

 when finished, it takes up its habitation."'^ Seeing the per- 

 fect insect come out of these holes, an unentomological ob- 

 server would naturally conclude that the beetle he saw had 

 formed it, and lived in it ; but, doubtless, the whole was the 

 work of the grub. Of all the Coleopterous genera there is 

 none the species of which are generally so rich, resplendent, 

 and beautiful, as those of Buprestis : these likewise, in their 

 first state, there is abundant reason to believe, derive their 

 nutriment from the produce of the forest, in which they some- 

 times remain for many years before they assume their perfect 

 state, and appear in their full splendour, as if nature required 



1 See Kirby in Linn. Trans, v. 250. — More than a hundred species of the 

 Capricorn tribe, many of them nondescripts, were collected near Rio de Janeiro 

 by Captain Hancock of the Foudroyant. 



2 The larva a Callidium (which Dr, Leach has discovered to be C. bajulum) 

 sometimes does material injury to the wood-work of the roofs of houses in 

 London, piercing in every direction the fir-rafters (in which it most probably 

 took up its residence while they were growing as trees), and, when arrived at 

 the perfect state, making its way out even through sheets of lead one sixth of an 

 inch thick, when they happen to have been nailed upon the rafter in which it 

 has assumed its final metamorphosis. I am indebted to the kindness of Sir 

 Joseph Banks for a specimen of such a sheet of lead, which, though only eight 

 inches long and four broad, is thus pierced with twelve oval holes, of some of 

 which the longest diameter is a quarter of an inch ! Mr. Charles Miller first dis- 

 covered lead in the stomach of the larva of this insect. 



3 p. 310. 



