708 
ANNUAL REPORT OF NEW-YORK 
PINE. TRUNK. 
York. On a still summer’s night the peculiar grating or 
crunching noise which the larvae; make in gnawing the wood 
may be distinctly heard at a distance of eight or ten rods. 
That the insect does not open a passage out of the wood 
whereby to make its exit until it attains its perfect state, I 
infer from the fact that several of these beetles gnawed their 
way out of one of the pillars of the portico of a newly built 
house in my neighborhood, some years since, the noise being 
heard several days before they emerged, and whilst they were 
still at some distance in the interior of the wood. 
"When pine timber after being felled is allowed to remain in 
the forest through the summer months, it is liable to become 
much injured from becoming infested with these borers. They 
invariably make their exit from the wood upon its upper side, 
and the holes which they perforate becoming filled with water 
from every shower, the decay of the timber is rapidly accelera¬ 
ted. Experienced lumbermen are well aware of these facts, and 
are careful to peel the bark from logs that remain where- they 
are cut, during the hot season of the year. The nidus in which 
the beetles deposit their eggs being thus removed, the timber 
escapes their attack. 
The marks of this species and of several others related to it 
are so vague that it is very difficult to describe them in such a 
manner that they can be easily recognized and clearly discrimi¬ 
nated. And hence authors have been much embarrassed and 
discordant in the names they have applied to this insect. It is 
the Monohammus titillator of Dr. Harris’s Treatise. The spe¬ 
cimens which I have are too obscure to enable me to form a 
decided opinion, but I doubt not Dr. Le Conte is correct in 
pronouncing the titillator of Fabricius to be a different species 
occurring only at the south ; though ho obviously errs in sup¬ 
posing the dentator of Fabricius to be the female of titillator, 
since Fabricius explicitly states that the antennae in dentator 
are three times the length of the body. Mr. Kirby also regarded 
this as different from the titillator, and gave it the name confu- 
sor, in allusion no doubt to its having been confounded with 
that species. And this name becomes doubly appropriate in 
view of the remark justly made by Dr. Lo Conte, that it is 
difficult to determine from Mr. Kilby’s description whether this 
