62 FIFTH REPORT OF THE ENTOMOLOGICAL COMMISSION. 
eggs are deposited in the interior of the bark, the outer layers of which 
the ovipositor of the female penetrates." 
It has been claimed by Ratzeburg and also by Reifsig* that the 
European larva? of Buprestis and the numerous allied genera, such as 
Chrwsobothris, Chalcophora, etc., attain their full size in two years ; but 
according to Perris the time required for their transformations is but a 
single year, as may be seen by the extracts from his work further on. 
As regards the habits of the larvae we have no direct observations on 
the young of this family in this country, though much needed in con- 
nection with the use of remedial measures. 
Mr. E. Perris, in his invaluable work, entitled " Insectesdu Pin mari* 
time," says of the larva of the European Ancylocheira flavomaculata : 
The larva of the A. flavomaculata lives in the wood of old pines recently dead, and 
especially in the larger branches and the large twigs (pieux). It is, indeed, under these 
two last conditions that they oftenest occur. It does not stop in the bark, because it 
is in the interior of the bark that the female lays its eggs, by means of its oviduct, 
and after its birth it plunges into the wood to the depth of about a centimeter [nearly 
two-fifths of an inch]. It follows the longitudinal fibers of the sap-wood while mak- 
ing a gallery elliptical in section, which it leaves behind it completely filled and packed 
with excrement and detritus. When the time of its metamorphosis approaches it 
goes towards the surface of the sap-wood, perforates it to the bark, sometimes makes 
a small incision into the latter, stops up the gallery with a plug made entirely of 
small, compacted chips ; then it retires backward a little into a cell scooped out in 
the wood, and this is where it transforms into a pupa. 
The following extract from Perris refers to the habits of Chrysobothru 
solieri, which also lives in the maritime pine in France. The habits of 
our G. dentipes of the oak, and G. femorata of the oak and different fruit 
trees, and G. harrisii of the white pine are probably quite similar. 
According to my observations the Chrysobothris only lays its eggs on the trunks of 
pines from five to fifteen centimeters in diameter at the base, and on the branches of 
old trees. I have never found it on an old trunk, and when a large prostrate pine is 
deprived of its branches it is on them that it lives, and not on the trunk. I have 
already said that the larva lives at first under the bark; it there busies itself, some- 
times attacking very plainly the sap-wood, sometimes boring a sinuous gallery, which 
it leaves behind it rilled with white chips and excrements of a brownish red; but at 
the approach of winter it burrows into the wood, where it gouges out a gallery ellip- 
tical iu section, the dimensions of which increase as its body grows larger. When 
the moment of transformation has arrived it returns into its gallery, and undergoes 
its metamorphosis sometimes more than two centimeters from the surface, because I 
have found some pupa? and perfect insects at this depth. 
Perris calls attention to the fact that though the Buprestid beetles 
stand quite high in the Coleopterous series, yet their larva 1 have an 
organization inferior to that of all other Coleopterous larvae known. 
Thus, they have neither feet nor eyes, and there are no other Coleopte- 
rous larva? which, as iu the Buprestids, have very rudimentary labial 
palpi, and which consist of less than two joints. 
•Ratzeburg's Die Waldverderbuiss, etc., ii, p. 360. 
