RHYNCHOPHORA. 
269 
and spiued internally, with their palpi minute and 
conical; the labrum obsolete; the eyes vertically ob- 
long, and the third joint of the tarsi bilobed, except 
in Tonne as and Platypus. 
All the species are small, mostly black or dull brown 
in colour, and usually somewhat oblong, or cylindrical 
in shape, being especially convex on the upper side. 
Many of them are very destructive to trees ; their 
larvae eating irregular galleries at right angles from a 
straighter central line; and it is from their habit of 
always engraving this kind of pattern in their devasta- 
tions that some of them have been termed “Typo- 
graphers.” 
The small, dull black, elongate, cylindrical species of 
Hylastes occur in profusion in the tracks eaten by 
their larvae under the bark of decaying or felled pine- 
trees ; they have the club of the antennae scarcely 
flattened, the tibiae distinctly spurred at the apex, and 
the prosternum excavated in front ; whilst in Hylur- 
gus piniperda, a larger, more robust insect, found 
sometimes in still greater profusion, and very injurious 
to fir-trees, this excavation is obsolete. 
The Hylesini have an elongate oval club to the 
antennm, and the tibiae obsoletely spurred ; they, also, 
feed on wood. One small species, II. vittatus (Plate 
XII., Fig. 6), is very prettily variegated. 
It is, however, to the genus Scolytus that the uu- 
worthy distinction of destructive ability must be 
awarded ; one of them, the destroyer, S. destructor , 
being notorious for the ravages it inflicts, both in its 
larval and perfect state, upon elm-trees, especially in 
the London parks. 
Its larvm are white, floshy, thick, curved, and foot- 
