28 



THE CANADIAN ENTOMOLOGIST. 



granary weevil, rice, pine, nut, water, and other weevils. Perhaps the 

 only erroneous use of weevil made in this country was with the httle yel- 

 low maggot of the wheat fly. 



Entomologists most often write plum weevil, and pomologists use 

 cureulio, which is the name generally used by farmers and others. Evi- 

 dently this name was adopted from its scientific generic title, as then 

 known in the early part of this century, but almost before its adoption 

 into common parlance, it was removed from scientific nomenclature. Had 

 it not been introduced then, it would hardly be found in the English 

 vocabulary now. It is in use nowhere else at the present time, 

 being an obsolete technical word, known only in the books of 

 the earlier writers on insects ; and in its original use by Pliny and the 

 Latins, over 1800 years ago, it was api^Ued to the corn worm, which by 

 the English was called weevil., and by the French calendre, since Latinized 

 into Calandra by Clairville for the name of a genus, containing our corn 

 and rice weevils. 



The word curctdio reached its greatest ascendancy when Linnaeus, 120 

 years ago, transferred the name from the Romans into his natural system, 

 employing it in a generic sense to designate all snout beetles. 



Westwood,* in 1839, states that "In this tribe of insects, as else- 

 where, from the multiplicity of named groups into which the old LinnaeaU' 

 genus has been separated, without the adoption of any principle regulating 

 the retention of the old generic name, it has been entirely sunk, so that 

 we find no modern genus Curculio.'" 



It has, however, been retained by some classifiers for a few beetles, 

 not including the pluni weevil, until now, while all writers employ a family 

 name, Curculionidce. 



The plum weevil was first described by Herbst, in 1797, under the 

 name Curculio nenuphar. The specific name nenuphar is the French name 

 for the great European water lily ( Nymphcea alba). 



About 1830, Schonherr erected the genus Conotrachelus, meaning 

 conical thorax or throat. At the abandonment of the name Curculio, our 

 plum weevil fell into this genus, and hence is known as Conotrachelus 

 nenuphar, Herbst. 



There are about thirty species of Conotrachelii in N. America, all 

 agreeing in structure quite closely with the plum Conotrachelus. The 



* Westwood, Introduc. Mod. Classif. Insects, I., p. 348. 



