MICHIGAX STATE POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 339 



ITS XATUKAL HISTORY. 



This beetle, like the Plum- weevil, is a native American 

 insect, and has from time immemorial fed on, and bred in, our 

 wild crabs. It eventually learned to like our cultivated apples 

 and pears, and is also found on ([uinces. At present it does 

 considerable damage to the crop in some localities, though it 

 yet prefers the wild to the cultivated fruit. Like the Plum- 

 weevil also, it is single-brooded, and winters over in the beetle 

 state, though I was led to believe differently a year ago. With 

 its long thin snout it drills holes into the fruit, much resem- 

 bling the puncture of a hot needle, the hole being round, with 

 a more or less intense black annulation, and an ash-gray 

 center. Those holes made for food are about one-tenth of an 

 inch deep, and generally scooped out broadly at the bottom, in 

 the shape of a gourd. Those which the female makes for her 

 eggs are scooped out still more broadly, and the egg at the 

 bottom is often found larger than the puncture at the orifice, — 

 thus indicating that it swells from absorption, by a sort of 

 endosmosis, of nutritive fluid from the surrounding fruit, just 

 as the eggs of many saw-flies and of some other snout-beetles 

 are known to do. 



The egs; is fully 0.04 of an inch long, nearly oval, not quite 

 three times as long as wide, and of a yellowish color, with one 

 end dark and empty when the embryo larva is well formed. 

 The egg-shell is so very fine that the larva seems to gradually 

 develop from it instead of crawling out of it ; and by taking a 

 matured egg and gently rolling it between the thumb and 

 finger, the young larva presents itself, and at this early age its 

 two little light brown mandibles show distinctly on the head. 

 As soon as this larva hatches, it generally goes right to the 

 heart of the fruit and it feeds there around the core, producing 

 much rust-red excrement, and acquiring a tint of the same 

 color. It feeds for nearly a month, and when full grown 

 presents the appearance of Figure 8, b. 



