268 Forty-fourth Report on the State Museum 



counted twenty-three pods, not more than ten of which arrived at 

 maturity. Only one plant of this latter was entirely unfruitful. It 

 will thus be seen that the twenty plants bore among them but thirty- 

 two pods in all, of which less than one-half came to perfection. The 

 bean in question, I should mention, was not one of the most freely- 

 bearing varieties, six pods being the average yield of each plant. 

 {Entomologist's Monthly Magazine, xxii, 1885, p. 114.) 



A comparison of the above yield with that sown at the same time 

 from uninjured beans, warranted Mr. Wood in claiming, as "proved 

 beyond all question, that the presence of the beetle [to the extent 

 above stated] is highly prejudicial, not to the germinating qualities 

 of the seed, which appear to be uninjured, but to the reproductive 

 capabilities of the adult plant." 



That Mr. Wood might with propriety have been even more emphatic 

 in his conclusions, will appear when the result of his experiment is 

 presented in the following form : Beans averaging only one and one- 

 half weevil perforations, produced less than 27 per cent of the aver- 

 age number of pods, and not exceeding 13 per cent of an average 

 matured crop. 



It should be stated, however, that a somewhat greater injury might 

 be expected to accrue from presence of B. rufimanus than from that of 

 B. obsoletus — ours being about one-fourth less in size, or in the pro- 

 portion of 0.12 inch average length to 0.15 inch in the European 



species. 



Infested Beans Unfit for Food. 



While beans that had been infested with the weevil would not be 

 given place on the table, their value for feeding to stock would not be 

 materially impaired ; but so long as they contain the beetle, and it is 

 not always very easy to determine this condition without opening them 

 for examination, it might be hazardous, to say the least, to feed them 

 to our domestic animals. 



Curtis relates :* "An alarm was spread in some parts of France, in 

 1780, that people had been poisoned by eating worm-eaten pease, and 

 they were forbidden by authority to be exposed in the market." The 

 pease were given scientific examination, and the insect found to be 

 the pea-weevil Bruchus pisorum. 



A small lot of beans was submitted to Dr. Curtis, in 1845, for 

 examination, by the Secretary of the Eoyal Polytechnic Institute, which 

 had been sent from Sicily by a cabriolet proprietor whose horses had 

 become much deranged in their health by feeding on them. Less 

 than one-half of the beans were found to contain from one to four 

 Bruchids, to which the name of Bruchus Jiavimanus was given by 

 Schonherr. 



* Farm Insects, 1860, p. 362. 



