INDIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 



179 



more time than usual to decorate these lovely insects. We 

 learn from Mr. Marsham that the grub of B. splendida was 

 ascertained to have existed in the wood of a deal table more 

 than twenty years. ^ 



Another tribe of internal wood-borers belong to the genus 

 Sirex of the order Hymenoptera. Mr. Stephens informs me 

 that the fir-trees in a plantation of Mr. Foljambe's, in York- 

 shire, were destroyed by the larvae of Sirex gig as; while 

 those of another, belonging to the same gentleman, in Wilt- 

 shire, met with a similar fate from the attacks of Sirex juven- 

 cus. In proof of the ravages made by this last insect, Mr. 

 Raddon exhibited to the Entomological Society a portion of 

 the wood of a fir-tree from Bewdley Forest, Worcestershire, 

 of which twenty feet of its length was so perforated by its 

 larvas as to be only fit for fire-wood ; and being placed in an 

 outhouse five or six of the perfect insects came out every 

 morning for several weeks.^ When fir-trees thus attacked 

 are cut down, it often happens that the larvae of the species 

 of Sirex inhabiting them have not attained their full growth 

 at the time the wood has been employed as the joists or 

 planks for floors, out of which the perfect insect, even years 

 after, emerge, to the no small surprise and even alarm of the 

 inmates. An instance of this, where several specimens of S. 

 gigas were seen to come out of the floor of a nursery in a 

 gentleman's house, to the great discomfiture both of nurse and 

 children, is related by Mr. Marsham, on the authority of Sir 

 J oseph Banks ^ ; and a similar circumstance, stated by Mr. 

 Ingpen, occurred in the house of a gentleman at Henlow, Bed- 

 fordshire, from the joists of the floors of which whole swarms, 

 literally " thousands," of Sirex duplex Shuckard ^, emerged 

 from innumerable holes, large enough to admit a small pen- 

 cil-case, causing great terror to the occupants. As the house 

 had been built about three years (the joists of British timber), 

 there could be no doubt of the larvae having been more than 

 that time in arriving at their perfect state. ^ Amongst the 



1 Linn.' Trans, x. 399. 2 Trans. Ent. Soc. Lond. i. proc. Ixxxv. 



3 Linn. Trans, x. 403. 



4 This species inhabits the Spruce-fir (Pinus nigra). — Shuckard in Loudon's 

 Mag. of Nat. Hist. 1837, p 632. 



5 Trans. Ent. Soc, Lo7id. ii. proc. Ixxxii. ; and lii. proc ii. 



N 2 



