114 
COLEOPTERA. 
IS 
Fig. 61. 
middle, and thickened a little at each end. The head 
proportionally larger than in the other borers ; the first three 
rings of the body are short, the second being the widest, and 
each of them is provided beneath with a pair of minute 
sharp-pointed warts or imperfect legs ; the remaining rings 
are smooth, and without tubercles or rasps ; the last three 
are rather thicker than those which immediately precede 
them, and the twelfth ring is very obtusely rounded at the 
end. The beetles from these borers are very slender, and 
of a cylindrical form, and their antennae are of moderate 
length and do not taper much towards the end. 
The species which attacks the blackberry appears to be the 
Saperda ( Oberea ) tripunctata of Fabricius (Fig. 
51). It is of a deep black color, except the 
fore part of the breast and the top of the tho- 
rax, which are rusty yellow, and there are two 
black elevated dots on the middle of the thorax, 
and a third dot on the hinder edge fclose to the 
scutel ; the wing-covers are coarsely punctured, 
in rows on the top, and irregularly on the sides and tips, 
each of which is slightly notched and ends with two little 
points. The two black dots on the middle of the thorax are 
sometimes wanting. This beetle varies from three tenths 
to half an inch in length. It finishes its transformations 
towards the end of July, and lays its eggs early in August, 
one by one, off the stems of the blackberry and raspberry, 
near a leaf or small twig. The grubs burrow directly into 
the pith, which they consume as they proceed, so that the 
stem, for the distance of several inches, is completely 
deprived of its pith, and consequently withers and dies 
before the end of the summer. In Europe one of these 
slender Saperdas attacks the hazel-bush, and another the 
twigs of the pear-tree, in the same way. 
The Lepturians, or Lepturaiee, constitute the third fam- 
ily of the Capricorn-beetles. In most of them the body is 
narrowed behind, which is the origin of the name applied 
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