THE MAPLE BORER. 375 
parts of the town had been bored by them. One tree, over one foot 
in thickness, had about twelve holes in the trunk, from which the 
beetles had issued a year or two previous. The leaves during the 
past summer were small and curled up, and the tree was evidently 
in a sickly condition. The few Aphides and Psoci, observable on the 
leaves in July and August, were not sufficiently numerous to occasion 
the trouble, and we attribute it to the effects of the borer. Another 
somewhat larger sugar maple in the same yard, the age of which 
was about forty-five years, had but two holes in it, made by the 
same borer, probably in 1878 or 1879 ; the tree was nearly healthy, 
with fully developed leaves. A red maple close at hand had not 
been affected by the borer, and we could not learn that this species 
(A. rubrum) had ever been attacked by this borer. It seems to us 
that these are clearly demonstrated cases where healthy trees have 
been killed by borers. 
The first observer to notice this borer, and the fact 
that it destroys living maples, was Rev. L. W. Leon- 
ard, who gave an account of its habits to Harris. His 
attention was called, in 1828, to some young maples 
in Keene, N. H., which were in a dying condition. 
He discovered the insect in its beetle state under 
the loosened bark of one of the trees, and traced the 
recent track of the larva three inches into the solid 
wood. In the course of a few years these trees, upon FlG - m>—&y*>bius8pe- 
" -ill cio8u$. Natural gize. 
the cultivation of which much care had been be- -From Saundera. 
stowed, were nearly destroyed by the borers. 
This beetle was said by Mr. E. B. Reed, in 1872, to be gradually 
destroying the sugar maples at London, Canada, and in the Report 
of the Entomological Society of Ontario for 1878 Mr. Saunders states 
that the destruction was spreading rapidly in the streets of the same 
city. To this society we are indebted for the use of the figure of the 
beetle. 
Regarding its ravages in Vermont, Mr. J. A. Lintner thus writes to 
the Country Gentleman (1884): 
This borer is destroying a large number of our sugar maples, as its burrows usually 
are carried around the trunk beneath the bark, and when several occur in the same 
tree they girdle it by their interlacings and thus kill the tree. Even when they are 
not fatal to the tree, they occasion unsightly cracking of the bark and serious deform- 
ities of growth. In the pleasant village of Bennington, Vt., where I am sojourning, 
I notice that very many of the beautiful sugar maples that ornament its streets and 
shade its homes are threatened with speedy destruction through the attack of this 
pernicious borer. 
The beetle, according to Harris, lays her eggs on the trunk of the 
maple in July and August. The grubs barrow into the bark as soon as 
they are hatched, aud are thus protected during the winter. In the 
spring they penetrate deeper, and form, in the course of the summer, 
long and winding galleries in the wood, up and down the trunk. 
