TRIBE XI. CALAIS' INI. 261 



to Dakota, south to Ohio, Missouri and Texas. The intervals of 

 elytra are flatter and have more of a silken lustre and the stria? 

 are much less distinctly punctured than in jHindiird. 



Tribe XI. BALANINI. 

 THE NUT AND ACORN WEEVILS. 



One genus, Balattiniis. of striking individuality, comprises this 

 tribe and includes the beetles popularly known as Nut and Acorn 

 Weevils. Their most obvious character is the bulky body com- 

 bined with the long and slender beak, which in the female of 

 some species is much longer than the body, though in others it is 

 as short or shorter than the body, while it is always shorter in 

 male. The beak is used by the female for drilling the holes in the 

 nuts or acorns through which the eggs are deposited in the kernel, 

 and is longer in proportion to the thickness of the husk and shell 

 of the nut. The mouth parts at the end of the beak are also pe- 

 culiar, the movement of the mandibles (Fig. 0) being vertical in- 

 stead of horizontal, as is usual in Coleoptera. The antennae are el- 

 bowed, very long and slender, funicle 7-jointed, club elongate-oval, 

 pointed, annulated and pubescent; eyes rather large, flat, nearly 

 rounded, finely granulated ; front coxa? contiguous ; thorax without 

 postocular lobes; scutellum distinct; femora clavate, strongly 

 toothed ; tarsi dilated, claws divergent, toothed. In general appear- 

 ance the beetles are ovate, broadest at base of elytra, tapering to- 

 ward apex, one-fourth to one-half inch in length, exclusive of beak, 

 brown, mottled with scales of lighter shade; the species resem- 

 bling one another so closely as to make specific identification 

 very difficult. 



The sexes of most of the species are very dissimilar, the beak- 

 being invariably longer in the female, twice as long as that of the 

 male in the species attacking nuts which have a thick husk (Fig. 

 73, &. c.) ; not greatly longer, however, in the species attacking 

 annual-fruited oaks. The female is also usually larger than the 

 male, but some individual exceptions have been noted. The py- 

 gidium, fifth ventral and first and second ventral segments are 

 all modified in the male, these modifications being noted in the 

 keys and descriptions which follow. The fifth ventral segment 

 has usually a small apical area bare with a tuft of hair each side 

 more or less developed. The first and second ventral segments 

 are often broadly impressed or slightly concave, and there is often 

 a sharp cleft between the second and third segments, apparently 

 due to the position in which the beetle, as in the case of the some- 

 times protruded pygidium, has died, thus making the third seg- 



