Packard.] 
INSECTS OE THE FOREST. 
235 
pine borer {Monoliammus notatus), whose creaking noise 
we often notice in passing by piles of white pine wood, and 
sometimes hear issuing from some chair or table or chest of 
drawers, in which it has remained while they are passing 
through the saw mill and carpenter’s shop on their way to 
the chamber or kitchen. Its mysterious creaking noise nat¬ 
urally occasions a good deal of speculation as to its source. 
One sometimes finds the beetle in sawn and planed lumber 
lying in its cell, or it may issue from the leg of a table or 
bureau drawer, with its long legs and horns like a ghost 
from another world, when its advent causes nearly as much 
of a flutter in the heart of the housekeeper as would the ap¬ 
pearance of a veritable spirit. 
I have found these larvae in July in abundance, when they 
were a little over an inch long, and had apparently com¬ 
pleted their flrst year. I was unable to find any beetles or 
chrysalides, and am disposed to think that they produced 
the noise by rubbing their hard, smooth, horny heads or 
jaws against the sides of their burrow. Dr. Fitch, however, 
states that the beetle itself makes the noise, and it is evi¬ 
dent that both larva and beetle produce a similar sound. I 
will quote his statement entire. “On a still summer’s night 
the peculiar grating or crunching noise which the larvm 
make in giiawing the wood may be distinctly heard at a 
distance of eight or ten rods. That the insect does not 
open a passage out of the wood whereby to make its exit 
until it attains its perfect state, I infer from the fact that 
several of these beetles gnawed their way out of one of the 
pillars of the portico of a newly built house in my neighbor¬ 
hood, some years since, the noise being heard several days 
before they emerged, and whilst they were still at some dis¬ 
tance in the interior of the wood.” 
The grub is nearly cylindrical, white and soft, with nu¬ 
merous fine reddish hairs. The second segment of the body 
is flattened and larger than the others ; the succeeding rings 
11 
