STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
721 
PINE. TRUNK. 
This and the other bark beetles of the pine have numerous 
insect, enemies which wage incessant war upon them. Various 
species of small beetles pertaining to the families Staphylinidce , 
Histeridce, &c., are always to be met with under the loose 
worm-eaten bark of pines, and M. Perris has ascertained that 
these insects resort to this situation for the purpose of rearing 
their young, their larvm being predaceous and subsisting upon 
the larvae and pup® of the bark beetles. 
243 . Fine-writing bark-beetle, Tbmicus calligraphus, Germar. 
Under the bark of the pitch pine and other species of pine, 
mining long and often zigzag tracks lengthwise of the tree, these 
tracks having short, coarse, irregular branches; a chestnut-brown 
bark-beetle 0.18 to 0.22 long, cloathed with numerous yellowish 
gray hairs, its thorax rough anteriorly from close elevated points, 
and punctured posteriorly, its wing covers with rows of coarse 
punctures, their tip broadly excavated as though with a gouge- 
chisel, the surface of this excavation rough from coarsish punc¬ 
tures, and its margin on each side with five or six small unequal 
teeth. Appearing mostly in the month of May. 
This species was originally named exesus, or the excavated 
bark-beetle, in allusion to the tips of its wing covers, in the old 
Catalogue of Rev. P. V. Melsheimer, under which name a short 
account of it was published by Mr. Say, in the year 1826. Ger¬ 
mar, however, .had described it two years before, under the 
name calligraphus , meaning elegant writer, which name it must 
retain, although not happily chosen, the tracks which this beetle 
forms under the bark being coarse, irregular, confused, and far 
less beautiful than those of many of the species of this genus. 
It is in the pitch pine that this beetle mostly occurs in the 
State of New-York, but I have also met with it in the limbs of 
aged white pines, and farther south it is common in the yellow 
pine. Its burrow is somewhat like that of the preceding species, 
consisting of a single long furrow extending lengthwise of the 
tree or limb, from six to twelve inches in length, but it is less 
straight in this species, being usually curved more or less, and 
according to accounts it is often perfectly zigzag. The same 
notches are formed along its sides as noticed in the foree-oiim 
[Ag. Trans.] 46 
