264 Forty-fourth Report on the State Museum 



The habits and transformations of this insect will probably be found 

 to vary but little from those of the Pea-weevil; and the same remedies 

 doubtless will be as efficacious against the one as the other. It is 

 generally known that the Pea-weevil rarely injures the embryo or 

 germ of the future sprout, and that " buggy peas '' may consequently 

 be used for seed; though the plants from them will probably be puny 

 and feeble during the first stages of their growth. This Bean-weevil 

 is a more inveterate enemy, for in most instances I find the germ is 

 devoured, rendering the beans as worthless for seed as they are for 

 food. 



Yours respectfully, 



ASA FITCH. 



Following the above, after a short note about " Southern Beans fed 

 to Prisoners of War," Dr. Fitch wrote : 



Specimens were sent from Rhode Island in 1862 to the Boston 

 entomologist, Mr. Sanborn, probably ticketed as " Bruch. Fabse Fh." 

 The abbreviation was no doubt misread " Fh." And thus this has 

 become in the collections a Fabrician species. Mr. Riley finding that 

 Fabricius had described no species under this name gives it as a new 

 species in his 3d Report, p. 55. What is here presented will clear 

 this matter of the misapprehensions which have been so widely 

 prevalent. 



A comparison of the descriptions of Dr. Fitch and Professor Riley, 

 will show, as is also claimed by Dr. Fitch, that the same insect was 

 described by each. It is worthy of notice in this connection, that 

 Dr. Fitch was unable to refer his Bruchus to the description of 

 B. obsoletus of Say (its comparison with " B. obscurus " Say is obviously 

 a clerical error), although it is now claimed by our best authorities 

 that they are but one and the same species. 



Injuries of the "Weevil. 



A field attack of this insect, if allowed to continue without effort to 

 check its progress, ordinarily results, within a few years, in the 

 worthlessness of the crop, or its entire destruction. The insect 

 multiplies with great rapidit} , for unlike the pea-weevil of which but 

 one larva occupies a pea, a score or more of this may be developed 

 within a single bean. It appears to feed upon all the varieties of 

 beans, none, so far as known, being weevil-proof. Professor Popenoe, 

 in writing the present year of its operations in Kansas, states: "It 

 has proved very troublesome here [in Manhattan] during the season 

 just closed, and an examination of our stock of beans of about eighty 

 sorts [in the Agricultural College] shows a destruction of the 

 product varying in amount, according to the sort, from 2 to 60 

 per cent, the Broad Windsor and the Lima being alone exempt from 

 attack." From other published accounts from different localities, it 



