116 
C 0 L E Q P T E R A . 
Fig. 62. 
of which it foils off in large Hakes, and the tree perishes. 
These crabs live between the bark and the wood, often in 
O 
great numbers together, and, when they are about to become 
pupae, each one surrounds itself with an oval ring of woody 
fibres, within which it undergoes its transformations. The 
beetle is matured before winter, but does not leave the tree 
until spring. It is the ribbed Rhagium, or 
lihagium lineatum * (Fig. 52,) so named be- 
cause it has three elevated longitudinal lines or 
ribs on each wing-cover ; and it measures from 
four and a half to seven tenths of an inch in 
length. The head and thorax are gray, striped 
with black, and thickly punctured ; the anten- 
nae are about as long as the two forenamed parts of the body 
together ; the thorax is narrow, cylindrical before and behind, 
and swelled out in the middle by a large pointed wart or 
tubercle on each side ; the wing-covers are wide at the 
shoulders, gradually taper behind, and are slightly convex 
above ; they are coarsely punctured between the smooth ele- 
vated lines, and are variegated with reddish ash-color and 
black, the latter forming two irregular transverse bands ; the 
under side of the body, and the legs, are variegated with dull 
red, gray, and black. The gray portions on this beetle are 
occasioned by very short hairs, forming a close kind of nap, 
which is easily rubbed off. 
The Buprestians and the Capricorn-beetles seem evidently 
allied in their habits, both being borers during the greater 
part of their lives, and living in the trunks and limbs of trees, 
to which they are more or less injurious in proportion to their 
numbers. Some of the beetles in these two groups resemble 
each other closely in their forms and habits. The resem- 
blance between the slender cylindrical Saperdas and some 
of the cylindrical Buprestians belonging to the genus Agrilus, 
is indeed very remarkable, and cannot foil to strike a common 
observer. Their larvae also are not only very similar in 
* Slenocorus lineatus of Olivier. 
