~ s 
178 INSECTS JNJURIOUS TO FOREST AND SHADE TREES. 
of its length. The smooth line along the middle of the thorax is less distinct than 
in the foregoing species, being slightly if at all elevated, and the punctures of this 
part are more coarse. Its wing-covers are not bearded posteriorly, and its general 
form is plainly more narrow and slender than that of the Pine Hylastes. The only 
specimen I have seen was captured the middle of July in the yard in front of my 
dwelling. (Fitch.) 
45. THE PALES WEEVIL. 
Hylobius pales Herbst. 
Order CoLEoPTERA; family CURCULIONID®. 
A large dark-chestnut colored or black weevil, 0.30 to 0.40 long, sprinkled over 
more or less with dots, whereof one on the middle of the outer side of the wing-covers 
is more bright, these dots being formed by fine short yellowish gray-hairs. Quite com- 
mon in May and June among pine trees, and in mill yards, and on piles of pine lumber 5 
with its long cylindrical snout perforating the bark and crowding an egg into the 
hole, the larva from which, similar in its appearance to that of the white-pine weevil, 
burrows beneath the bark, loosening it from the wood. (Harris’s Treatise, p. 61.) 
This is a very common pine insect, which rangés from Maine and 
Lake Superior to Florida. Leconte states that the head is very densely, 
though not coarsely, punctured, and is nearly opaque; the prothorax is 
coarsely and rugosely punctured. The pubescence of the clypeal spots 
is sometimes yellow, sometimes gray. Length 6.8™™ to 10.2; .27-.4 
inch. There are several closely-allied species which probably will be 
found to depredate on the pine. 
Our own observations on this borer were made many years ago at 
Brunswick, Maine. The burrows run under the bark of the trunk of the 
white pine; they extend irregularly over the inner surface of the bark, 
sinking down into the sap wood, wherein the autumn the larva makes a 
cell nearly a quarter of an inch deep, arched over at the top with a thick 
roof of “sawdust” or chips it had bitten off from the wood; over a sur- 
face of four square inches were eight or ten cells. Each cell in the 
middle of March contains a yellowish-white footless grub, half an inch 
long. Two weeks later we found two pup and two perfect beetles, 
one apparently having just thrown off its pupa skin. 
The history of the pales weevil seems, then, to be somewhat as follows: 
In May and June the beetle bores its way out from the cell, partially 
creeping out of the old larval burrow; flies about on sunny, warm days 
in April and May, then lays its eggs either on the sides of the opening 
of its old burrow, or in the crevices of the bark. Early in summer the 
young worm hatches, and burrows under the bark throughout the sum- 
mer, until it matures in the autumn, and makes the cell deep in the sap 
wood, where it hybernates, and about the first of April changes to a 
pupa. 
The cycle of its life is completed when the beetles fly forth early in 
May, and seek their mates, preparatory to laying the eggs from which a 
third generation are born. We have found the weevils flying about in 
Providence, R. I., during the middle of May. 
