42 THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 
wheat would never become affected unless either that is taken to 
the weevils or the weevils brought to it. It is certainly at times 
necessary that it should be granaried, but the damage by weevil is 
always occasioned by carelessness or heedlessness in shooting it 
in old dirty, uncared-for granaries or mills, which themselves are 
sure to harbour the little beetles, or by laying it in close prox- 
imity to some affected foreign corn. With foreign wheat weevils 
are a necessity. Our immense imports—somewhat exceeding 
our home growth, and drawn as they now are from all quarters 
and corners of the globe—are either affected on shipment or 
speedily become so from the dirty, unswept and uncleansed 
granaries into which the corn finds its way. The little pests 
could certainly be got rid of by shippers to a great extent if they 
would only try. The improved service and quickened passages 
has lessened weevil loss in corn to a remarkable extent within the 
last few years. Question a corn merchant used to foreign trade, 
and the answer will be somewhat as follows :—‘“‘ Oh! we know 
and hear nothing about weevil now to what we used to years ago. 
I have seen cargoes absolutely alive with them, and so that they 
burnt everything up.” 
The wheats which are now affected to any very serious extent 
are the Indian, and I have often seen samples of the excessively 
dry Calcutta and South-eastern Asian wheat in which it was 
almost impossible to find a perfect corn, the valuable starch of the 
kernel being consumed by the destructive little weevils. Calandra, 
like wheat and many other useful products, with their attendant 
evils, is undoubtedly an introduction from the East. Weevily 
wheat is invariably dressed after landing, and a large percentage 
of the little beetle are thus screened or blown out, but, of course, 
many of the perfect insects resident in the corn, and all in the 
larva or pupa state escape, the kernel not yet being light enough 
to be separated. When the cargo is very badly affected—when the 
whole bulk seems alive, as I have myself seen them on very hot 
summer days—itis a common practice for merchants to spout it, 
vz. é., to shoot the grain down a spouted trough, in which at the 
angle is a wire sieve with the meshes large enough to let the 
weevils pass through, but not the corn, which runs into the 
granary or into sacks as the case may be. By such means the 
quantity of weevils and dust sifted out is enormous, and this 
appliance is generally so situated at the wharves that the beetles 
