HORN-TAILS. 
535 
a fir-tree in Bewdley Forest, Worcestershire, England, was 
found to he so intersected by the burrows of these grubs, 
as to be fit for nothing hut 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 gigas 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- 
cayed 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 
he said to represent, as the saw-flies do some of the leaf- 
eating insects of the same order. 
Eight of the UiiockridvE are enumerated in my “ Cata- 
logue of the Insects of Massachusetts,” including two kinds 
of Xiphydria , which are now known to belong to the same 
family. 
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 which was fast in the hard wood ; 
an,d 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 
