476 ANNUAL REPORT OF NEW- YORK 



HAZELNUT. LEAVES. 



Mr. Say described tliis species in the year 1826, and it is pro- 

 bably since that date that Prof. Bohemann's name Rhois was 

 published, wliich name moreover is inappropriate, as it indicates 

 this insect to inhabit the sumach, whereas it is upon the hazelnut 

 that it is uniformly met with. It is a common species, and sits 

 upon the leaves in the posture of a dog, with its long fore legs 

 braced outwards and elevating its head high above its body. Its 

 larva probably subsists upon this shrub, but its habits are as yet 

 unknown to us. 



AFFECTING THE FRUIT. 



209. Straight-beaked nut-weevil, Balaninus rectus, Say. (Coleoptcra. 

 Curculionidae.) 



A small yellowish drab-colored weevil with a long slender beak 

 not thicker than a bristle and having the jaws placed at its tip 

 with which it bores a hole into the nut when it is young and soft, 

 and drops therein an egg which it crowds into the nut with its 

 beak. A small white footless worm hatches from this egg, which 

 feeds upon the meat of the nut and gnaws a small hole through 

 its side, out of which when full grown it escapes and buries itself 

 in the earth to pass its pupa state. 



We are not certain as to the species of weevils which produce 

 the grubs in our American hazelnuts, walnuts and acorns. As 

 the Straight-beaked weevil has a long slender beak similar to that 

 of the species which breeds in the hazelnuts in Europe, and as 

 I have met with numbers of this insect upon hazelnut bushes the 

 latter part of June, there can be little doubt but it was there for 

 the purpose of depositing its eggs in the young fruit. Dr. Harris 

 records the Long-beaked nut-weevil No. 185, as occurring also upon 

 hazelnut bushes, and it may be that both these insects infest tliis 

 fruit. They are much like each other, differing chiefly in their 

 beaks, which in the present species is but half the length of the 

 body and usually straight nearly to its tip, where it is curved 

 downwards, but in some individuals it is slightly curved through 

 its Avhole length, and is of a pitchy black color tinged in its mid- 

 dle with chestnut-brown. Its body is clothed with prostrate 

 drab-yellowish hairs on a blackish rust-colored ground. These 



