LEAF WEEVILS. 143 



Kollar* from Canon Schmidberger's observations: — "It makes 

 its appearance very early in spring, and is seen on the leaves 

 when it has scarcely completed its develoj^ment. It particu- 

 larly prefers young trees, to which it is very destructive. No 

 kind of fruit tree is secure from its voracity ; the leaves of 

 the Pear, Apple, Plum, and Apricot, and particularly those 

 of the Peach, it considers delicious food. It generally selects 

 only the best part of the leaf, and leaves the mid-rib and the 

 petiole. . . . Pairing follows. ... In June the female 

 enters the earth to deposit her eggs there ; and the grub that 

 is produced from the egg feeds on the roots of different kinds 

 of plants, passes the winter in the earth, and appears again 

 transformed into a beetle in spring." f 



Prevention and Eemedies. — Beating the beetles down in 

 the early morning, or on dull days, is one way of lessening 

 their numbers, bearing in mind that as they are ivinged the 

 various precautions always advised should be taken against 

 the disturbed beetles flying away and coming back to the 

 trees. 



Likewise washings or sprayings (for which see Index) of any 

 insecticide poisonous or destructive to the beetles, and harm- 

 less to the leafage, could not fail to be beneficial. 



To protect grafts, it is recommended to smear grafting-wax, 

 or a mixture of clay, which might keep off the beetles. (I 

 have no experience of this treatment myself.) 



For winter treatment, anything done to the bark would 

 presumably be quite useless, as, so far as appears, the larvae 

 and chrysalids are never to be found there, nor have we any 

 notes of the beetles wintering in its crannies. But probably 

 where the soil beneath the trees could be treated, we might do 

 much there towards getting rid of the infestation. Skimming 

 the surface and destroying it would do good if we could be 

 sure we went down low enough to remove the grubs ; but 

 these being so very small, it would be difficult to detect their 

 presence in the earth. But where the ground was bare, it 

 would be well worth while to try the effect of as heavy a 

 dressing as the owner thought safe of some chemical manure, 

 as kainite, nitrate of soda, or any other appHcation which 



* See Kollar, ' Naturgesch. der Schadl. Insekten,' pp. 258-260; English 

 translation, pp. 251, 252, in which this weevil is noted under various synonyms. 

 In the En<,'lish translation, revised by Prof. Westwood, that of Nemoicits is 

 added, being the generic name under which Stephens separated this downy 

 and scaleless Pliyllobius from the scale-bearing species. 



t It was considered by Nordlinger that the larvse went through their changes 

 not in the ground but in rolled-together leafage ; this view, however, is stated 

 by Kaltenbach not to have been confirmed ; whilst subsequent observations 

 have established the correctness of those of Canon Schmidberger, see ' Die 

 Pflanzenfeinde,' p. ISO. 



