90 
COLEOPTERA. 
the bottom of its burrow, makes its escape from the tree in 
the latter part of June, or beginning of July, and probably 
deposits its eggs before August has passed. 
This insect, which may be called the blight-beetle, from the 
injury it occasions, attacks also apple, apricot, and plum trees, 
though less frequently than pear-trees. In the latter part of 
May, 1843, a piece of the blighted limb of an apple-tree was 
sent to me for examination. It was twenty-eight inches 
in length, and three quarters of an inch in diameter at 
the lower end. Its surface bore the marks of twenty buds, 
thirteen of which were perforated by the insects ; and from 
the burrows within I took twelve of the blight-beetles in 
a living and perfect condition, the thirteenth insect having 
previously been cut out. On the 9th of July, 1844, the 
Hon. M. P. Wilder sent to me a piece of a branch from 
a plum-tree, \ which contained, within the space of one foot, 
four nests or branching burrows, in each of which several 
insects in the grub and chrysalis state were found, and also 
one that had completed its transformations. Soon afterwards 
I caught one of the blight-beetles on a plum-tree, probably 
about to lay her eggs. In the following month of August, 
I received a blighted branch of an apricot-tree, one inch in 
diameter at the largest end, and containing, within the short 
distance of six inches, seven or eight perfect blight-beetles, 
each in a separate burrow, and vestiges of other burrows 
that had been destroyed in cutting the branch.* 
This little beetle, which is only one tenth of an inch in 
length, was named Scolytus Pyri, the pear-tree Scolytus, by 
Professor Peck. It is of a deep brown color, with the 
antennae and legs of the color of iron-rust. The thorax is 
short, very convex, rounded and rough before ; the wing- 
covers are minutely punctured in rows, and slope off very 
suddenly and obliquely behind ; the shanks are widened 
and flattened towards the end, beset with a few little teeth 
* See mv communications on these insects in the Massachusetts Ploughman for 
June 17, 1843. Also Downing’s Horticulturist for February, 1848, Vol. II. p. 3Go. 
