202 INDIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 



beetle (^Anohium tessellatum, some of the dead perfect insects 

 of which I found in their holes), that it is necessary to replace 

 them at great expense to prevent the floors coming down ; and 

 I subsequently saw beams similarly attacked which had been 

 removed from houses at Antwerp.^ M. Audouin has laid before 

 the French Academy an account of the injury done by Termes 

 lucifugus to the wood-work of buildings at Rochefort and La 

 Rochelle ; and of that of the new galleries of the Museum of 

 Natural History at Paris by the larvae of a small beetle {Lyctus 

 canaliculatus Fab.), which feeds on the sapwood, in which its 

 eggs had probably been deposited before the wood was worked 

 up.^ Of one of the timber-eating beetles (^Anohium pertinax) 

 Linne complains " terehravit et destruxit sedilia mea^f and I 

 can renew the same complaint against A. striatum^ which not 

 only has destroyed my chairs, but also picture-frames, and 

 has perforated in every direction the deal floor of my chamber, 

 from which it annually emerges through little round apertures 

 in great numbers. The utility of entomological knowledge 

 in economics was strikingly exemplified when the great na- 

 turalist just mentioned, at the desire of the King of Sweden, 

 traced out the cause of the destruction of the oak-timber in 

 the royal dock-yards ; and, having detected the lurking 

 culprit under the form of a beetle {Lymexylon navale), by di- 

 recting the timber to be immersed during the time of the 

 metamorphosis of that insect and its season of oviposition, 

 furnished a remedy which eflectually secured it from its future 

 attacks.* No Coleopterous insects are more singular than 

 those that belong to the genus Paussus L. ; and one of them, 

 at least, remarkable, it is said, for emitting a phosphoric light 

 from the globes of its antennae, is also a timber-feeder ^ ; and 

 the genus Trypoxylon, many species of Crabro, Eumenes pa- 

 rietum, Latreille's genera Xylocopa, Chelostoma, Heriades, Me- 

 gachile, and Anthophora (all separated from Apis Jj.), perforate 

 posts and rails and other timber, to form cells for their 

 young. ^ 



' Spence in Trans. Ent, Soc. Lond. ii. proc. x. 

 ^ Guerin-Meneville, Revue Zoolog. 1840, p. 151. 

 3 Syst. Nat. 565. 2. 



* Smith's Introduction to Botany, Pref. xv. 

 ^ Afzelius in Linn. Trans, iv. 261. 



6 Kirby, Mon. Ap. Aug. i. 152. 194. Latreille, Gen. iv. IGl — . ' 



