COLEOFTERA. 65 



therein deposits an egg. From the latter a grub is hatched, 

 which devours the larva of the weevil, and is subsequently trans- 

 formed to a four-winged fly, in the habitation prepared for it. The 

 most effectual remedy against the increase of these weevils is to 

 cut off the shoot in August, or as soon as it is peiceived to be 

 dead, and commit it, with its inhabitants, to the fire. Such is the 

 substance of Professor Peck's history of this insect; to which ^ 

 may be added, that the beetles are found in great numbers, in 

 April and May, on fences, buildings, and pine-trees ; that they 

 probably secrete themselves during the winter in the crevices of 

 the bark, or about the roots of the trees, and deposit their eggs in 

 the spring ; or they may not usually leave the trees before spring. 



Perhaps the method used for decoying the pine-eating beetles 

 in Europe may be practised here with advantage. It consists in 

 sticking some newly cut branches of pine-trees in the ground, in 

 an open place, during the season when the insects are about to lay 

 their eggs. In a few hours these branches will be covered with 

 the beetles, which may be shaken into a cloth and burned. 



There are some of the long-snouted weevils which inhabit nuts 

 of various kinds. Hence they are called nut-weevils, and belong 

 chiefly to the modern genus Balaninus, a name that signifies liv- 

 ing or being in a nut. The common nut-weevil of Europe lays 

 her eggs in the hazel-nut and filbert, having previously bored a 

 hole for that purpose with her long and slender snout, while the 

 fruit is young and tender, and dropping only one egg in each nut 

 thus pricked. A little grub is soon hatched from the egg, and 

 begins immediately to devour the soft kernel. Notwithstanding 

 this, the nut continues to increase in size, and, by the time that it 

 is ripe and ready to fall, its little inhabitant also comes to its 

 growth, gnaws a round hole in the shell, through which it after- 

 wards makes its escape, and burrows in the ground. Here it 

 remains unchanged through the winter, and in the following sum- 

 mer, having completed its transformations, it comes out of the 

 ground a beetle. 



In this country weevil-grubs are very common in hazel-nuts, 

 chestnuts, and acorns ; but I have not hitherto been able to rear 

 any of them to the beetle state. The most connnon of the nut- 

 weevils known to me appears to be the Rhynchcenus [Balaninus) 

 9 



