HORN-TAILS. 
535 
a fir-tree in Bewdley Forest, Worcestershire, England, was 
found to be so intersected by the burrows of these grubs, 
as to be fit for nothing but firewood; and that the winged 
insects continued to come out of it, at the rate of five, six, 
or more each day, for the space of several weeks. Mr. 
Marsham states, on the authority of Sir Joseph Banks, 
that several specimens of Urocerus gigciB were seen to 
come out of the floor of a nursery in a gentleman’s house, 
to the no small alarm and discomfiture of both nurse and 
children. The grubs must therefore have existed in the 
boards or timbers before they were employed in building, 
and these materials would not have been used if in a de- 
caved state. The sexes of most of these insects differ con- 
siderably in size and color, and in the shape of their body 
and of their hind legs. There are not many different kinds, 
but they are very prolific, and abound in mountainous dis¬ 
tricts, and in temperate climates, where forests of pines 
and firs prevail. A new order was proposed for their 
reception by Mr. Macleay, and was named Bomboptera^ on 
account of the humming sound that they make in flying. 
Their young partake of the nature of the wood-eating 
grubs of the capricorn beetles, which therefore they may 
be said to represent, as the saw-flies do some of the leaf- 
eatino; insects of the same order. 
Eight of the Urocerid^ are enumerated in my “ Cata- 
loome of the Insects of Massachusetts,” includino; two kinds 
of Xiphydria^ which are now known to belong to the same 
familv. 
In the autumn of 1826, Major E. M. Bartlett, of North¬ 
ampton, “ found, on the body of one of his almost lifeless 
pear-trees, a dead insect, about one inch and a half long, 
attached to the tree by its awl or borer, of about the same 
length, near an inch of wdiich was fast in the hard wood; 
and there were several deep punctures near it, evidently 
made by the same instrument, and in some of them eggs 
were deposited.” Not long afterwards Major Bartlett found 
