The Scolytidse is a family of small roundish tetramerous beetles characterised by the fact that the female beetle enters bodily the tree or plant for her egg-laying, the eggs being generally laid in little notches cut out in the sides of the mothergallery. With some species, however, the eggs are laid all together in a bunch. The grubs are whitish, wrinkled and legless, and have, brown scaly heads. The close resemblance to each other of the grubs of the various species renders the determination of the species from larval characters extremely difficult, if not impossible, but the figures or patterns presented by the mother gallery and the larval galleries in relation to it are in general so highly characteristic, that with these and the name of the host plant one can generally determine the species.