62 INSECTS INJURIOUS TO VEGETATION. 



length of the snout this insect has been placed in the genus 

 Wiyncharms by some naturalists; but the antennte are implanted 

 before the middle of the snout, and not far from the sides of 

 the mouth. This beetle measures from two to three eighths 

 of an inch in length, exclusive of the snout. It may be found 

 in great abundance, in May and June, on board-fences, the 

 sides of new wooden buildings, and on the trunks of pine-trees. 

 I have discovered them, in considerable numbers, under the 

 bark of the pitch-pine. The larvae, which do not materially 

 differ from those of other weevils, inhabit these and probably 

 other kinds of pines, doing sometimes immense injury to them. 

 Wilson, the ornithologist, describes the depredations of these 

 insects, in his account* of the ivory -billed wood-pecker, in the 

 following words. " Would it be believed that the larvae of an 

 insect, or fly, no larger than a grain of rice, should silently, and 

 in one season, destroy some thousand acres of pine trees, many 

 of them from two to three feet in diameter, and a hundred and 

 fifty feet high! Yet whoever passes along the high road from 

 Georgetown to Charleston, in South Carolina, about twenty 

 miles from the former place, can have striking and melancholy 

 proofs of the fact. In some places the whole woods, as far as 

 you can see around you, are dead, stripped of the bark, their 

 wintry-looking arms and bare trunks bleaching in the sun, and 

 tumbling in ruins before every blast, presenting a frightful 

 picture of desolation. Until some effectual preventive or more 

 complete remedy can be devised against these insects, and 

 their larvae, I would humbly suggest the propriety of protecting, 

 and receiving with proper feelings of gratitude, the services of 

 this and the whole tribe of wood-peckers, letting the odium of 

 guilt fall to its proper owners." Some years ago Mr. Nuttall 

 kindly procured for me, near the place above-mentioned, speci- 

 mens of the destructive insects referred to by Wilson. They 

 were of three kinds. Those in greatest abundance were the 

 Pales Aveevil. One of the others was a larger, darker-colored 

 weevil, without white spots on it, and named Hi/Iobius picworus, 

 by Germar and Schonherr, or the pitch-eating weevil; it is 



* American Ornithology. Vol. IV. p. 21. 



