Indian Forest Records. 
[VOL. II. 
$ . — The antenn® hardly reach to middle of elytra and are more 
slender than in male. Hind breast with no tawny pubescence. Last 
ventral segment with rounded hind margin. {Descr. after Gahan). Plate 
n, fig. 2, shows this insect. 
Life History. 
The egg is laid in an interstice in the bark, and the small grub 
on hatching out bores down to the bast and sap wood and feeds in this. 
At first whilst small the bast wood is only slightly grooved, Plate II, fig. 
3A and PI. IIIA, but as the grub becomes larger and its mandibles stouter 
it works down deep into the sap wood filling the whole of the gallery and 
depression thus made between the outer shell of the bark and the inner 
layer of sap wood with wood particles and excreta, Plate II, fig. 3B ; Plate 
IIIB. The iiTegular shaped area thus eaten out in the bast may be as 
much as 5" across, the edges being very irregular and may stretch a 
fifth or a fourth round the tree, the height diameter being 4" or more (Plate 
II, fig. 3 ; Plate III). When full fed, the grub, starting usually from 
one of the lower edges of the depression Pt. II, fig. 3C, tunnels into the 
wood to pupate. This tunnel is carried deep down into the wood and 
usually curves upwards from its orifice in the outer sap wood ; the chamber 
bored out at the end of the tunnel is parallel to the long axis of the tree 
and is of larger diameter than the tunnel leading to it, Plate II, fig. 3C ; 
Plate me. In making this tunnel and chamber the larva ejects every 
particle of wood eaten away through a hole which it cuts in the bark of the 
tree, and it is these holes and the heaped up wood dust and excreta to be 
seen at the foot of the tree which renders it easy to recognize and find 
this insect when it is in its full grown larval stage, although e.\ternally no 
trace of the large eaten out depression in the cambium layer and sap wood 
will be visible on the bark of the tree. Beyond this fact that the larva is 
full grown and is pupating in its pupal chamber at the commencement of 
June, and that the beetle issues during the rains (July- August), nothing 
further on the subject of its life history is known. 
Damage committed in the Forest. 
This insect, when at all abundant in the forest, is a dangerous pest 
owing to the fact that its method of feeding is capable of destrojdng the 
tree, whilst its mode of pupation destroys the timber. The large circular 
holes and borings in oak timber are well known in the Western Himalayas 
and are entirely the result of the work of this beetle. 
