WEEVIL. 
64 
tained the depth sufficient for its convenient re- 
sidence during the long period of its winter con- 
cealment, it lies dormant for eight months, and 
then, casting its skin, commences a chrysalis, of 
the same general shape and appearance with the 
rest of the beetle tribe; and it is not till the be- 
ginning of August that it arrives at its complete 
or ultimate form, at which period it casts off the 
skin of the chrysalis, creeps to the surface, and 
commences an inhabitant of the upper world. 
During this state it breeds, and, like the major 
part of the insect race, enjoys, for a short time, 
the pleasures of a more enlarged existence. As a 
species it is distinguished by its brown colour, 
and the great length and slenderness of its curved 
snout; it measures nearly half an inch in length 
from the tip of the snout to that of the body. 
Dr. Darwin, in his elegant poem The Botanic 
Garden, thus beautifully expresses the egress of 
this insect from the cavity of the nut. 
“ So sleeps in silence the Curculio, shut 
In the dark chambers of the cavern’d nut. 
Erodes with ivory beak the vaulted shell 
And quits on filmy wings it narrow cell.” 
To this genus belongs the destructive insect 
peculiarly called the Weevil^ which is the Curculio 
granarius of Linnaeus: its colour is an uniform 
dull chesnut or reddish brown, and its length 
scarcely two lines : the female insect perforates a 
grain of wheat, and in it deposits an egg, or two 
at most, (a grain of wheat being incapable of 
