
400 THE INSECT WORLD. 
been pierced through by the larvee of the Sirex during the 
sojourn of the French troops in the Crimea. Some of these 
insects were still shut up in the gallery which they had hollowed 




Fig. 378.—Sirex gig’as. 
out in the metal. M. Dumeril (and this was one of the last works 
of that venerable and learned naturalist) wrote a Report on this 
subject, in which were recorded many analogous instances. He 
quoted as an example, that M. le Marquis de Bréme, in 1844, 
showed to the Société Zoologique many cartridges in which the 
balls had been perforated by the insects to a depth of about a 
quarter of an inch. These cartridges came from the arsenal of 
Turin. They had been placed in barrels made of larch wood, the 
inside of which had been attacked by the insects. It was dis- 
covered that it was after having left the wood that they had 
gnawed through the envelopes of the cartridges and at last the 
balls themselves. In 1833 Audouin presented to the Société 
Entomologique de France a plate of lead, from the roof of a build- 
ing, on which this naturalist supposed that the larvee of a Callidium* 
had made deep sinuosities, as they do in wood. Before this, parts 
of the leaden roofs at La Rochelle had been noticed not only gnawed, 
but pierced from one side to the other, by the larve of Bostrichus 
capucinas.t| In 1844 M. Dumarest reported the erosion and 
perforation of sheets of lead by a species of Bostrichus and by the 
Calliidium. In 1843 M. Du Boys presented to the Société d’Agri- 
* A Coleopterous insect.—Ep. t+ Also a beetle.—Ep. 

