692 FIFTH REPORT OF THE ENTOMOLOGICAL COMMISSION. 
of this borer, and which has been the evident cause of the death of 
many lirs in Maine. 
I have seen hundreds, perhaps nearly a thousand, dead firs whose 
trunks were riddled with tin- holes of these borers. The spruce is less 
frequently killed, but I have taken from a dead tree two pieces of 
spruce bark, each about inches square, one containing sixteen and 
the other eighteen holes through which the beetle had escaped. Fig. 230 
represents one of these specimens of natural size. 
Fig. 229.— Oviposition of Monohammus confusor; a, a, a, jaw 
punctures; 6, one of them laid open to show position of 
e gg— natural size. (Original.) 
That the larva is not less than two years in attaining its growth is 
proved by the fact that on exauiiniug the same tree in which we saw 
the female ovipositing, August 30, 1884, the next season, June 26, 1885, 
I took from under the bark a larva 14 mm in length, or about one third 
as long as the mature worm. 
Larva. — Body soft, white, long, nearly cylindrical, being but slightly flattened, 
entirely footless, all the abdominal segments of the same width, except the minute 
small one. From the first abdominal segment (or fourth from the head), the body 
increases in width, being widest on the protboracic segment (or the one next to the 
