SHOT-BORER BEETLE. 
95 
was so strong at the time, that a quantity of beetles which I secured 
in a tube, buried themselves so rapidly in the cork, that between the 
10th of September and the morning of the 12th they had already 
bored five tunnels into it, and it contained at least seven female 
beetles. 
In the tunnelled wood I found one white larva, but could not say 
anything certain as to its species. Amongst specimens sent by my 
request to Mr. Mosley, Beaumont Park, Huddersfield, he wrote me on 
Sept. 18th that one stem was about a foot long, with four holes to the 
outside, and on cutting it up he extracted a hundred and eleven 
females and five males of X. dispar . Mr. Mosley also forwarded to 
me three white larvae which he found dead, “ all together at the 
bottom of one of the perpendicular galleries. These were about one- 
sixteentli of an inch in length, fleshy and white. The one I especially 
examined was very markedly ringed, of about an even girth through¬ 
out the body, but smaller at the head, which was furnished with a 
strong pair of yellowish jaws, browner at the tips. The tail extremity 
was blunt, and the body sprinkled with a few hairs; the segment 
next the head was furnished with a tubercular-like prolongation 
appearing to answer to a foot, but I could not say whether it was the 
X. dispar maggot or not.” 
The method of attack is stated by Schmidberger to be for the 
beetles to choose a spot, usually on the main stem of the tree, making 
no distinction as to the tree being sickly or healthy, young or old, so 
long as it is thick enough for the purpose,—at least half an inch in 
diameter. (The attacked stems sent me from Toddington were from a 
little under to a little over three quarters of an inch across.— Ed.). 
The female then proceeds to bore passages, and in a small chamber 
at the opening of each of these she is stated to lay her snow- 
white, longish eggs. The first-hatched larvae are recorded by Schmid¬ 
berger as being noticeable about the end of May, and these are 
considered by him to arrange themselves (in the same manner as the 
beetles we noticed as above described), one after the other in the 
tunnels so as to fill them, and to feed there on a whitish substance 
with which the passage is encrusted, and there the maggots, according 
to the observations quoted, turned to chrysalids and thence to beetles.* 
This general history of the beetle agrees in all the points in 
which we have had the opportunity of comparing it with the habits of 
our English X. dispar. 
It is held by some German writers that each of the maggots bores 
a gallery of its own, but Schmidberger, who studied the matter 
* Bostrichus di^ar, Schmidberger (Apale dispar, Fab.); Xyloterus dispar, Erieh- 
son. See ‘ Naturgeschichte der Schadlichen Insecten von Vincent Kollar,’ pp. 26.1— 
273, and English translation ‘ Kollar’s Treatise on Insects,’ pp. 254—262. 
