58 NORTH AMERICAN INSECTS. 
plantations and forests. The ravages occasioned by these 
maggots are seen on our fruit trees, apples, pears, plums, 
chestnuts, hazel-nuts, and in the rice, peas, wheat, and 
other grains. 
The Patm-wEEvit (Calandra palmarum) is one of the 
Figure 15. largest Snout Beetles of North — 
America, but it is found mostly 
in the tropics. I found it in St. 
Domingo, and have given an illus- 
tration, or rather representation, 
of it in this work, because it gives 
an excellent idea of the form and 
appearance of all the other genera 
and species of Curculiones. This 
Beetle is about an inch long, and 
is black; it has large eyes, tri- 
angular antennz terminating in 
a knob, and a long snout, upon 
which is a hairy crest like the 
mane of a horse; its wing-covers 
are striated. Its larvae are known 
in the tropics of America under the name of Palm-worms, 
and they live in large numbers in the trunks of several 
Palm-trees, but principally in the Cabbage-palm (Areca 
oleracea), which grows in abundance in the mountainous 
parts of St. Domingo. When fully grown, they are about 
three inches long and one inch in circumference, of a dirty 
yellow color, with a black head, looking like a piece of fat 
enveloped in a transparent skin. These disgusting-looking 
animals are roasted upon a wooden spit, or broiled, and 
eaten with dried and pulverized bread, seasoned with salt 
and pepper, and considered by many epicures as the ne plus 

Palm-weevil. 
ultra of delicacies. 
It is a pity that the people of St. Domingo have not 
adopted the polite custom of the Austrians, who never sit 
