Insects at home; being a popular account of insects, their structure, habits and transformations . n iti the middle ofthe elytra. This tiny wood-borer is one of those insects which are verylocal, but very plentiful in those places which they choose fortheir residence. Sometimes it prefers to live in houses, andsometimes in the open air. It takes as great a range in pointof diet as in residence. Its ordinary, and indeed its normal,food is decaying wood, and the insect may accordino-ly befound in old railings and similar localities. But it sometimestakes a strange fancy for leather, and has been
Insects at home; being a popular account of insects, their structure, habits and transformations . n iti the middle ofthe elytra. This tiny wood-borer is one of those insects which are verylocal, but very plentiful in those places which they choose fortheir residence. Sometimes it prefers to live in houses, andsometimes in the open air. It takes as great a range in pointof diet as in residence. Its ordinary, and indeed its normal,food is decaying wood, and the insect may accordino-ly befound in old railings and similar localities. But it sometimestakes a strange fancy for leather, and has been captured insome numbers while feeding on old shoes. Sometimes speci-mens of this insect have been taken in the middle of flour- 198 INSECTS AT HOME. barrels; the larvae having probably been hatched in the woodof which the staves were made, and then relinquished theiroriginal habitations for the richer diet furnished by the flour. We now come to a most extraordinary insect, which is drawnon Woodcut XXI. Fig. 3. It goes by a great number ofnames. The scientific title by which it is now known is. 1. Gracilia Rhagium inquisitor. 2. Strangalia annata. 3. Astinomus asdilis. 4. Pogonocerus pilosus. Astinomus cedilis. There is no possibility of mistaking thisinsect, our sole representative of its genus, which may beknown by the broad flattened body, the tubercles on the sides ofthe thorax, and the enormous length of the antennae, which inthe females are twice as long as the body, and in the males some-times more than four times the length of the body. Thisinordinate length is obtained by the elongation of the joints,not by multiplying them. THE TIMBERMAN. 199 This is essentially a uurthem insect, being seldom seen alivesouth of Scotland. Rannoch Wood is the best known localityfor this wonderful Beetle, and in that favoured spot the ex-perienced entomologist will generally manage to captui-e , it is plentiful enough to have gained a popular name,that of TiMBERMAN, u
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1870, booksubjectentomology, bookyear1
