26 
THE AMERICAN PLUM BORER. 
(Euzophera semifuneralis, Walk.) 
Order Lepidoptera. Family Pyralhee. 
(Plate II.) 
Although various boring insects have occasionally attacked 
the plum” these have been species whose principal injuries are 
done to other trees, and in a species first described (in this 
country) in 1887, and whose immature stages remained un¬ 
known" until described by the writer in 1890, we have our first 
example of a borer devoted, so far as now known, to the plum 
alone 
This species was first reported to me as injurious August 21, 
1887 in a letter from Mr. Benjamin Buckman, 1 armmgdale, 
Sangamon county, Illinois, accompanied by a few borers found 
in young Chinese plum-trees (Prunus simom), one of which ^as 
nearly killed by them. 
The attack was described as most general near the forks of 
the trees, especially at the bases of the lower limbs, u _e 
larvse were sometimes found an inch, or less, within the earth. 
The smaller ones were near the surface of the bark, sometimes 
just under the thin outer film; but others were next the wood 
As many as fifty were taken from a single tree, the bark her 
being killed in large irregular patches.' ^ 
Although the plum borer and the common peach borer (San- 
nina exitiosa) often occur together in the same tree, they are 
usually distinct in their operations, the work by the peach borei 
being "limited to within a foot and a half of the ground, and 
that”of the plum borer rarely extending so near the bottom o 
the trunk. Occasionally, however, both insects were at work n 
the same part of the tree, and their burrows met or even crosset 
each other. The irregularly circular places of exit of the moth 
of the plum borer were near the upper part of the patch attected 
or even some distance from its edge. 
_I 
lellerella) bred from dates. 
