STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
695 
PINE. ROOT. 
216 . Bristlt-neckrd Valgus, Valgus seticollis, Beauvois. (Coleoptera. 
Melolonthidse.) 
Beneath the bark around the crown of the roots of ant-eaten 
stumps, feeding upon the wood, fleshy, white, thick cylindrical 
grubs, resembling small larvae of the May beetle (No. 76), having 
three pairs of legs anteriorly and the body curved into an arch, 
its hind part being bent more or less inward under the breast, 
divided by impressed transverse sutures into twelve rings; the 
pupae and perfect insects also occurring in the same situations; 
the latter short thick beetles about 0.28 long, the males chestnut 
brown, beneath black, the females dull black, both sexes with 
chestnut colored feet, and covered more or less with little ash 
gray scales, flattened upon their backs, their wing covers much 
shorter than the abdomen and marked with rather obscure im¬ 
pressed lines, a broad shallow groove along the middle of their 
thorax, which groove is more deep anteriorly, and their anterior 
shanks with a row of about five little uneven teeth along their 
outer edge. 
In the month of April last, I met with sixteen of these beetles 
beneath the bark of a pine stump, slightly above the surface of 
the ground. The stump had been much eaten, by white ants 
apparently, the sap wood being all consumed and the cavity 
thus formed being stuffed with sand and dirt which had been 
carried up from the soil beneath, in which these insects were 
lying, torpid in their winter quarters, most of them crowded 
together in a heap in a single cavity in this dirt, the others 
scattered about in it singly, their larvae having no doubt sub¬ 
sisted upon the decaying wood. 
1 his is the insect which is named Tric/iius dispar in Dr. Har¬ 
ris’ Catalogue. It however had been long before described by 
Beauvois under the name Trichius seticollis. The genus Valgus , 
in which it is included by entomologists at the present day, is 
distinguished from Trichius by its hind pair of legs arising wide 
apart from each other, and its forward shanks having usually 
five teeth instead of but two or three. 
1 he sexes of this insect difieringso much in their colors, has 
caused great perplexity to authors and has led to much confu¬ 
sion in the few notices of it which have been published. Thus 
