Indian Forest Records. 
[VOL. II. 
% 
and larvae of Priouus beetles seem exclusively to attach themselves to the 
oak as their habitation. They bore circular chambers, penetrating to the 
heaii; of the stem and winding into various passages both up and down the 
trunk. The}' eject the undigested particles through holes made for the 
purpose, forming lateral communications with the main tunnels. Some 
twenty years ago Mr. Walter F. Blandford, Lecturer on Entomology at 
the R. I. E. College, Coopers Hill, first di’ew attention to this statement 
of Mr. Thompson's on the subject of insect attacks in the Naini Tal oaks. 
Mr. Blandford had never visited India, but in commenting upon 
Mr. Thompson's assertion he pointed out that it was quite impossible that 
hard oak wood could be tunnelled into by the larvse of Lucanidce in the 
manner detailed. 
Incidentally it may be mentioned that this family does not contain 
the worst beetle pests. The larvse of lamellieorns, to which group the 
Lucanidce grubs belong, are bulky curved insects, the hinder segments 
consisting of a soft swollen kind of bag or sac. Whilst a grub so built 
could move slowly about in tunnels in rotting wood, it would be quite 
impossible for it to do so in hard wood.* 
For some years subsequent to its appearance this statement of 
Mr. Thompson's as to the cause of the damage to the oaks at Naini Tal 
and elsewhere in the Himalayas was received and quoted in India as an 
accepted and undisputed fact.t In Injurious InsectsX I pointed out that 
the galleries said to be made in the oaks by the Stag beetle grubs were more 
probably the work of the ‘ Prionus ' larvse (a Cerambycid) than that of the 
Lucanid ones, but the real cause of the diseased condition of the trees in the 
station has remained an open question round which a certain amount of 
speculation has arisen. As will be seen later, it is now believed that the 
galleries in the oak wood are made by the larvse of a Cerambycid. 
That this is the view now' held by the Manager of the Breweiy at 
Jeolikote near Naini Tal is borne out by the fact that he recently forwarded 
to the office of the Imperial Forest Zoologist some Cerambycid grubs and 
specimens of oak timber from galleries in w'hich they had been taken, with 
a request for the identification of the pest. 
In the follow’ing pages I propose to describe, from investigation and 
* For a full description and illustrations of the Stag beetle and lamellicorn larva vide 
my Manual of Forest Zoology for India, p. 79 and 6gs. 132a, 137, 138, and 143a, 
t Vide Indian Museum Notes, Vol., II, p. 148. 
J Injurious Insects of Indian Forests, p. 32. 
