Wood-Boring Caterpillars 
underground, living upon various roots and tubers, 
They are not very easy to rear, neither can one learn a 
great deal about them, as all their time is spent in 
hiding. I have bred two or three species successfully 
on growing plants in large flower-pots. Some of these I 
will describe later.. 
Most of the “‘ Clearwings ” and sundry other species 
have wood-boring caterpillars. While some of them 
are difficult to manage, with care and attention they can 
nearly all be reared. The real difficulty is to find them, 
and much patient searching is often needed before their 
retreat is discovered. Take YT. crabroniformis, the 
Hornet Clearwing, as a typical example. The eggs 
are small, flat, and oval in shape, in colour brown, and 
are laid on the bark near the base of a Sallow bush or 
tree about the first week of July. If the stump is an 
old one, and is the home of a colony of this Clearwing, 
the fact is revealed by the presence of a number of 
round holes, almost large enough to admit a lead 
pencil, scattered here and there. These are the exit 
holes of past generations, and are of no use to us now, 
except as signs of the insects’ presence at one time. 
But pup# are what we want now. ‘The eggs, we have 
seen, are laid on the outer bark in July; they hatch in 
a short time, and the little white grubs disappear under 
the bark. Their work of destruction has begun. 
During the remainder of this summer and part of the 
next the larve live near the root and just under the 
bark, and their presence can be detected by the little 
bundles of brown, sawdust-like refuse which they push 
C.B.M. 9 2 
