depredators are scarcely known, except to a few professional entomologists, and unless they become more destructive in the future than they are at present, or have been in years past, nut culturists have little to fear from their depredations. Among the most common species of insects injurious to the hickory, the following may prove most annoying to the cultivator.

THE HICKORY-TWIG GIRDLER (Oncideres cingulatus. Say).-A small yellowish-gray beetle, a little less than an inch long, usually appearing in this latitude during August, the females depositing their eggs in the twigs of from a quarter to a half-inch in diameter.

On old large trees the loss of a few or many of these is scarcely noticed; but on young seedlings or grafted stock it is quite a different affair, for on such plants the females usually select the leader in preference to the lateral twigs in which to deposit their eggs. The female girdles the twigs for the purpose of providing proper and acceptable food for her progeny; that is, first the green, then the slowly drying, then the perfectly hard, seasoned hickory or whatever kind she may have attacked. Selecting a suitable twig, she rests upon it, usually with head downward (Fig. 70), and with her mandibles cuts out a ring of bark about one-twelfth of an inch wide, and deep enough to reach the firm wood nderneath. The place selected for this annular incion may be only a few inches from the terminal bud, or foot below it, and in some instances she will cut two incisions on the same twig some distance apart, but usually there is only one on a twig. While cutting this incision she will sometimes rest long enough from her labors to deposit an egg in the bark above. The number of eggs she deposits in the twig is probably variable,

FIG. 70.

but three full-grown grubs is the most I have ever found, and the larger proportion examined had only one. This girdling of the twig prevents the flow of sap, and the leaves soon wither and drop off, and the bark and wood shrivel and become hard and dry; but in the meantime the eggs have hatched and the minute grubs have bored their way through the soft bark and reached the pith, feeding in this while acquiring size and strength of jaws that will enable them to consume more solid food later and during the succeeding winter, spring and summer. Some do not reach maturity until the second summer; at least, in this latitude, as I have found after very careful observation and while collecting many hundreds of specimens. I will say, however, that this insect is usually referred to by entomologists as rather rare, and in general it is, but some years ago, in an old clearing near by where there was a great number of young hickory seedlings and sprouts, it was for a season or two very abundant; then it suddenly disappeared, and I have not taken a half-dozen specimens since. The grubs bore out the wood in the infested twig, and in most instances so completely as to leave only a thin shell of the wood or bark, by the time they have reached maturity and are ready to pass into their imago or perfectwinged stage.

This species of twig girdler also attacks the apple, pear, persimmon, elm, and other kinds of trees, and with those like the apple, with a soft and brittle wood, the girdled twigs are frequently broken off by the winds; but this rarely occurs with the hickories, and we can usually find the stumps remaining on the trees years after the beetles have emerged. The only way to keep this pest in check is to cut off and burn the girdled twigs any time before the larvæ have reached maturity, and as the girdled dead twigs are readily seen, the gathering is not difficult, from medium-sized trees.

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THE PAINTED HICKORY BORER (Cyllene pictus. Drury). This is, perhaps, one of the most common and widely distributed of all the hickory borers, but, so far as my observations have extended, it rarely attacks young or healthy trees of any age; in fact, I have never found it in or about growing trees, but I have seen it, by the thousands, breeding in decaying specimens and in hickory cordwood cut during the winter months and ranked up in shady places. A hickory tree cut down in fall or winter, and left on the ground or cut up into cordwood, is pretty sure to attract this borer early in spring, the females swarming over the bark, depositing their eggs upon it, and by the ensuing autumn the wood will be fairly honeycombed if this insect is at all abun

FIG. 71.

dant. The general color of the beetle is black, and the size as shown in Fig. 71. There are three narrow, whitish bands across the top of the thorax, and one slightly broader band at the extreme point of the wing-covers; but the next band is in the form of an inverted V; the point ![ICKORY BORER. Of the A does not quite touch the broad lateral band, as in the closely allied species known as the locust borer (C. robinia), with which it is often confounded; besides, in the latter the markings are of a deep yellow, and not white or of a faint yellowish tinge. The hickory borer always appears in spring, and the locust borer in the fall, not later than September in this part of the country. Below or behind the V-shaped band there are three others, but all broken up into mere dots, and not continuous.

In the South, and especially in Texas, there is a somewhat smaller but closely allied species (Cyllene crinicornis) that attacks the pecan tree and its wood in the same way as our common hickory borer, but in the Southern or Southwestern species the bands on the

wing-covers are all interrupted or broken up into small white spots or dots. I have no remedy to suggest, further than to cut down old, infested trees, and to haul the wood out into the sun and spread it out where it will quickly dry and become seasoned. If the felled tree and wood is stripped of its bark as soon as cut, the female beetles will not deposit their eggs upon it.

There are other long-horned beetles (Cerambycida) that are occasionally found breeding in the hickories, and among these may be named the Belted Chion (Chion cinctus), Tiger Goes (Goes tigrinus), Beautiful Goes (Goes pulchra), and the Orange Sawyer (Elaphidion inerme), but they are usually quite too rare to be considered as very destructive insects.

HICKORY-BARK BORER (Scolytus 4-spinosus. Say). -Only once within my memory has this minute but destructive beetle appeared in any considerable numbers in my neighborhood, although I have occasionally received a few specimens from correspondents in various parts of the country, even as far west as the Pacific coast in Washington. This borer is a very small, cylindrical, dark brown beetle, about one-fifth of an inch or less in length, and one-sixteenth in diameter. The hind part of the body is quite blunt (truncate), the males having four short but distinct blunt spines, two on each side, projecting from the hind part of the abdomen, hence the name "4-spinosus." In the females these spines are absent, otherwise they closely resemble the males. These bark borers usually appear here in the Northern States the last of June or early in July, and both sexes attack hickory trees of all species, but appear to prefer the old and nearly mature trees to the young and small with thinner bark. After boring through the bark and reaching the soft cambium layer underneath, upon which these insects feed, the female cuts a vertical channel in this substance, of little over an inch in length.

This burrow is a little larger than the diameter of her body, and along on both sides she deposits her eggs, to the number of ten to thirty, placing about an equal number on each side. When these eggs hatch, the young larvæ begin to feed on the soft material by which they are surrounded, making minute burrows at first, and at nearly right angles with the parent one; but as they increase in size they are forced to diverge, those above the center working upward, and those below downward, as shown in Fig. 72. These burrows enlarge as the

grubs increase in size, as shown, most of them reaching their full development by the time cold weather sets in, but some do not cease feeding until spring, then pass to the pupal stage, and later to the perfect or beetle form, and from the extreme end of these burrows they bore a hole straight out to the surface, and are then ready to begin the cycle of life again, either on the tree. from which they have emerged, or others near by. Some fifteen years ago 1 noticed that the leaves of some of the old hickory trees on my place were turning yellow prematurely, and upon examination I found the bark perforated with minute holes not larger than small bird shot, indicating the presence of the bark borer under consideration. Seven of the very largest and, presumably, the oldest, appeared to be affected, and these were immediately cut down and stripped of their bark, exposing the little grubs to the