256 Short Communications : — 



On returning, I submitted the insect and the amount of my 

 notion, to Mr. Westwood, who was so kind as to reply as 

 follows. 



March, 1833. Respecting your impression that the Cam- 

 bridge mules, or wules, which attack the dried peas and beans, 

 are not curculionideous, but rather ptinideous, I can give you no 

 information from direct observation. The insect which you have 

 enclosed found alive at Christmas, among the peas, is certainly 

 the corn weevil, Curculio [Calandra) granaria. For my own 

 part, I think its occurrence in this situation, at that period, and 

 in company with larvae, was not accidental ; because insects of 

 this kind are found in the larva, pupa, and imago state, at the 

 same time. The date of your capturing the specimen of the 

 weevil, therefore, affords no clue to the decision of the ques- 

 tion ; for these kinds of indoor insects seem to take but little 

 notice of the seasons. Moreover, the Calandra does not con- 

 fine itself to the wheat in an undressed state ; since your valued 

 correspondent, C. A. Babington, Esq., has kindly supplied 

 me with specimens of the insect which were found in the de- 

 cayed floors, and under heaps of malt, in a malt-house in 

 Cambridge, the grains of which they devoured. In company 

 with this insect were also found in profusion the following 

 beetles : — Trogositacaraboides, Cucujus monilicornis, Alphito- 

 phagus quadripustulatus, and Tenebrio molitor. The ship 

 biscuit is also equally attacked hyXhQCalaiidra ; and Sparrmann 

 (vol. i. p. 103., quoted by Kirby and Spence, vol. i. p. 228.) 

 mentions that it infests ground peas used on board of ship. 

 Thus the chances are that the occurrence of your single 

 specimen of Calandra among the peas was not accidental. 

 On the other hand, it is by no means improbable that your 

 supposition that one of the Ptinidae, belonging to the genus 

 Anobium, may, by the Cambridge farmers, be termed the 

 weevil or mule, or wule ; and, in fact, that the larvae which you 

 found were those of a species of Anobium, the term weevil 

 being employed (as it appears to me) . in a generic sense to 

 designate any insect found feeding upon grain, in the manner of 

 the Calandra,vf\x\\o\\.t reference to its possession or want of a ros- 

 trum [by the possession of which the Curculionidae are cha- 

 racterised]. Hence the term weevil would be at once applied 

 to an Anobium, or any one, or all, of the other insects found by 

 Mr. Babington, if it, or they, were caught preying upon grain : 

 and it happens that an insect decribed by Linnaeus under the 

 name of />)ermestes paniceus is stated by Sparrmann to attack 

 the biscuit and ground peas, in conjunction with the true weevil 

 [Calandra granaria). This insect Messrs. Kirby and Spence 

 consider to belong to the genus Cryptophagus, from having 

 observed that a beetle of that genus (thus making a farther 



