Indian forest insects of economic importance Coleoptera . esince found it numerously in newly felled green deodar logs in Chamba. Itis probably distributed throughout the deodar tracts of the North-WestHimalaya. In June 1902 I cut some dead specimens of this platypid from the woodof a large girdled dead spruce in Tehri Garhwal. I could find no livingbeetles that year. Towards the end of June 1909 I discovered the beetle onthe wing at Kainthli in Chamba. The beetles were tunnelling through thethick bark of a dead spruce, felled four months previously, to oviposit. Thistree was in a drier state
Indian forest insects of economic importance Coleoptera . esince found it numerously in newly felled green deodar logs in Chamba. Itis probably distributed throughout the deodar tracts of the North-WestHimalaya. In June 1902 I cut some dead specimens of this platypid from the woodof a large girdled dead spruce in Tehri Garhwal. I could find no livingbeetles that year. Towards the end of June 1909 I discovered the beetle onthe wing at Kainthli in Chamba. The beetles were tunnelling through thethick bark of a dead spruce, felled four months previously, to oviposit. Thistree was in a drier state than I have ever found the insect in in spruce beetles were observedto be pairing, the female enteringby the same hole as the male, orvice versa, the insects pairing inthe outer sapwood. The femalethen carries the tunnel in the sap-wood in a series of zigzag curvesparallel to the circumference ofthe tree, and about two inchesin. The tunnel then turns, andgoes zigzagging down into thewood. There are no offshootsto the tunnel, the latter ending. |.-1(;. 390. K-g-tunnel ofin spruce. Chamba, X.\Y. Himalaya. , Stel>.,(E. P. S.) 6i6 FAMILY PLATYPODIDAE quite simply with no enlargement. At the bottom of one traced to its end,four newly laid translucent eggs were discovered. Just above the eggs inthe tube was a dead female beetle. I was unable, unfortunately, to deter-mine whether the beetle had died naturally, or had been killed whilst wewere cutting open the tunnel. It is a fact worthy of note, however, that aday or two before I discovered four eggs only at the bottom of a tunnel indeodar with a living female beetle just above them. Whether four eggsis the total number laid by this platypid I am unable to say, but the numberof eggs laid in the tunnel is almost certainly small in the case of theseHimalayan insects. Those in the hot and moist semi-tropical forests ofthe country lay a larger number, as is seen in the case of the Assam salplatypids. When numerous this platy
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1910, booksubjectbeetles, bookyear1914
