726 
ANNUAL REPORT OF NEW-YORK 
PINE. TRUNK. 
that the course he was pursuing would run his track into that 
of the third one. He hereupon abruptly alters his course, hear¬ 
ing directly away from the track of this neighbor until he has 
attained a suitable distance therefrom, and he then travels for¬ 
ward again, keeping at this exact distance from his neighbor’s 
path. But this soon brings him into proximity with another 
neighbor upon the other side ; and he now becomes aware of 
the fact that he is between two paths that are approaching each 
other, and that will consequently come so near together forward 
of him that he cannot proceed onward without running into one 
or the other of them. In this dilemma, to encroach the least 
that is possible upon his neighbors, he makes an abrupt turn so 
as to go square across one of these tracks. But this only serves 
to bring him into similar proximity with another track, and 
after this comes another and another; and now he reaches a 
fifth one, running in a different direction, requiring another 
alteration of his course to cross it at right angles. But we need 
not follow this subject further. Others also of these galleries 
when carefully inspected will be found scarcely less curious. 
How wonderful is nature, that thus presents an interesting sub¬ 
ject for our study in each particular track an inch or two in 
length which a family of little worms make as they eat their 
way along in the bark of a. tree, the parenchyma of a leaf, or 
elsewhere! How marvellous, that in such minute and seem¬ 
ingly unimportant and insignificant operations we invariably 
meet with so much to admire ! 
240* Pine tiaiber-beetle. Tomicus materiarius , new species. 
In the interior of the sap wood, mining slender straight cylin¬ 
drical burrows in a transverse direction, parallel with the outer 
surface, from which very short straight lateral galleries branch 
off at right angles above and below ; a rather slender cylindri¬ 
cal black shining bark-beetle, 0.15 long, with pale dull yellow 
legs and antennae, the fore part of its thorax and of its wing covers 
tinged with reddish yellow; the thorax equaling two-thirds the 
length of the wing covers, with a small elevated tubercle in the 
middle, forward of which it is rough from minute elevated points, 
the wing covers with rows of minute punctures, their tips round- 
