CERAMBYCIDR, se-rim-bisl-de, a fam ily of beetles of great extent, readily known by their very long antenna, which give its members the name of alongicorns.x' The fam ily already numbers some 12,000 or 13,000 spe cies. though probably not over half of the ex isting forms are known. It comprises some of the largest, most showy, as well as the most destructive insects of the sub-order. They are readily recognized by their oblong, often cylin drical bodies, the remarkably long, filiform, usually recurved antenna and the powerful in curved mandibles. Their eggs are introduced into cracks in the bark of plants by the long, fleshy, extensile tip of the abdomen. The lar vae are long, flattened, cylindrical, fleshy, often footless, whitish grubs, with very convex rings, the prothoracic segment being much larger and broader than the succeeding, while the head is small and armed with strong, sharp mandibles adapted for boring like an auger in the hardest woods. These borers live from one to three years before transforming, at the end of which time they construct a cocoon of chips at the end of their burrows, the head of the pupa lying next to the thin portion of bark left to con ceal the hole.
The species of the American genus Oncid eres are called girdlers, because the parent bee tle, after laying an egg in a small branch, gir dles this round with a deep incision, so that the portion containing the larva sooner or later falls to the ground. The growth of a longi
corn larva frequently takes more than a year, and under certain circumstances it may be enorynously prolonged. Monohammus con fusor has been known to issue from wooden furniture which was 15 years old. Individuals of another longicorn have issued from the wood of a table 20 and even 28 years after the felling of the tree from which it was made. Watson has related a case from which it ap pears probable that the life of a longicorn bee tle dwelling in household furniture extended over at least 45 years. It is generally assumed that the prolongation of life in these cases is due to the beetle resting quiescent long after it has completed the metamorphosis; but more probably it is the larval life that is prolonged; the larva continuing to feed, but gaining little or no nutriment from the dry wood in these unnatural conditions. A large number of longi corns stridulate loudly by rubbing a ridge in side the pronotum on a striate surface at the base of the scutellum. A few produce noise by rubbing the hind femora against the edges of the elytra, somewhat after the fashion of grasshoppers; and some possess highly devel oped stridulating surfaces on the hind and mid dle coxx.