52 THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 
Mr. Fitch a packet of the sweepings of corn ships known as 
“Tndian dust,” literally alive with these rice weevils from imports 
from the East Indies. At first they refused to have anything to 
do with English wheat sprinkled amongst them, straggling away 
at once from the grains and settling by preference on the broken 
bits of maize scattered with it; but after a while they commenced 
oviposition in the wheat, and on the 19th September the minute 
punctures showing the localities of oviposition were clearly 
visible at the extremity of the grain bearing the germ (where its 
softer nature affords an especially favourable position for deposit), 
and also occasionally in the harder part of the grain, but invariably 
on the convex side, never on that bearing the longitudinal furrow. 
The punctures were obvious and in many grains, but though 
I searched repeatedly and with great care I was unable to find 
what might with certainty be considered the eggs—I found minute 
ovate-spherical bodies, which appeared to be eggs, both in the 
abdomen of the weevils and in the infested corn, but I did not 
find larve contained in them in any stage, and could not be 
absolutely certain of their nature. 
On September 6th the beetles were pairing, and on placing 
them within reach of warmth from the fire they became very 
active, but during the rest of the experiment I kept them merely 
in the ordinary temperature of living rooms constantly used. 
So far the autumn warmth, and warmth of locality, may have 
acted on increase, but after this I noticed no further advance till 
on the 9th March of the present year, when on examining some of 
the corn amongst which the weevils were placed on the previous 
5th September, I found numerous wheat grains now each 
containing one larva, and there were also a very few pupe, the 
latter, however, all dead in different stages of development. The 
infested wheat was easily distinguishable from the rest on 
pressure by the nail, the attacked corn giving way; the interior 
appearing to the naked eye simply as if the contents were more 
loosely arranged than usual, but showing under the microscope 
as composed of isolated atoms and variously broken masses of 
rejectamenta. 
The thick fleshy grubs were now from a sixteenth to somewhat 
under the eighth of an inch in length when at their full stretch, 
but somewhat less in their usual curved position, and their 
breadth about two-thirds of their length. The grubs obtuse, 
