104 
COLEOPTERA. 
recognition or defiance. Having paired, the female, attend- 
ed by her partner, creeps- over the bark, searching the 
crevices with her antennae, and dropping therein her snow- 
white eggs, in clusters of seven or eight together, and at 
intervals of five or six minutes, till her whole stock is safely 
stored. The eggs are soon hatched, and the grubs immedi- 
ately burrow into the bark, devouring the soft inner sub- 
stance that suffices for their nourishment till the approach 
of winter, during which they remain at rest in a torpid state. 
In the spring they bore through the sap-wood, more or less 
deeply into the trunk, the general course of their winding 
and irregular passages being in an upward direction from 
the place of their entrance. For a time they cast their chips 
out of their holes as fast as they are made, but after a while 
the passage becomes clogged and the burrow more or less 
filled with the coarse and fibrous fragments of wood, to get 
rid of which the grubs are often obliged to open new holes 
through the bark. The seat of their operations is known by 
the oozing of the sap and the dropping of the sawdust from 
the holes. The bark around the part attacked begins to 
swell, and in a few years the trunks and limbs will become 
disfigured and Weakened by large porous tumors, caused by 
the efforts of the trees to repair the injuries they have 
suffered. According to the observations of General II. A. 
S. Dearborn, who has given an excellent account* of this 
insect, the grubs attain their full size by the 20th of July, 
soon become pupae, and are changed to beetles and leave the 
trees early in September. Thus the existence of this species 
is limited to one year. 
Whitewashing, and covering the trunks of the trees with 
grafting composition, may prevent the female from deposit- 
ing her eggs upon them ; but this practice cannot be carried 
to any great extent in plantations or large nurseries of the 
trees. Perhaps it will be useful to head down young trees 
to the ground, with the view of destroying the grubs con- 
* Massachusetts Agricultural Repository and Journal, Vol. VI. p. 272. 
