26 ^ PSYCHE [April 



NOTES ON ATTELABUS RHOIS AND PARASITE. 



BY C. A. FROST, SOUTH FRAMINGHAM, MASS. 



During July, 1904, while collecting Coleoptera along the edge of a large tract 

 of alders (Alnus incana) that covers a rocky hillside in the town of Wales, Maine, I 

 found this beetle occurring in great abundance. As many as a dozen of their rolls 

 or nests in various stages of freshness could be counted on a single small cluster of 

 bushes vrhile the ground was littered with the dried, brown cylinders that had fallen. 

 This v.'as on the loth of the month and five miles away at INIonmouth I was unable 

 to find a single specimen. On the 20th of June of the following year a few nests 

 v\ere found at Wales and on the 30th they were quite plentiful in a few places at Mon- 

 mouth. While I ha\e taken only two or three specimens of the adult weevil in Mass- 

 achusetts during the last five years, similar nests, each containing a similar egg, have 

 been found in numbers at Framingham, Mass., on the hazel (Corylus americana). 



In Maine the adult insect feeds upon the alder leaves, eating long narrow holes 

 between the veins in a manner that gives the leaves a very peculiar and distinctive 

 appearance. Most of the small cross veinlets are eaten off leaving the ends sticking 

 into the hole and giving it a ragged or notched outline, while here and there a veinlet 

 is left untouched. 



Dr. A. S. Packard, in 1872, published an article entitled Embryological Studies 

 on Hexapodous Insects, III Memoir Peabody x\cademy of Science, in which he gives 

 a few observations on the habits of this species of Attelabus. Therefore, while the 

 follovv'ing notes on the construction of the egg roll, or nidus, are not entirely new, 

 there may be a fev> more points worthy of consideration. 



The work of preparing and rolling the nidus, so far as shown by my observations, 

 is done entirely by the female weevil. She selects a leaf and cuts a slit on each side 

 of the petiole, extending from the blade to the mid-rib at a short distance from the 

 base of the leaf. This cutting leaves a triangular piece of the blade attached to the 

 petiole v,'hile the major part of the leaf is held only by the mid-vein at the point where 

 the cuts converge. This point is next attacked. The front legs are thrust down 

 through the two cross cuts and clasped around the mid-vein, while the hind legs are 

 spread far apart and extended out on the blade of the leaf. Then pushing downward 

 with the hind feet and pulling upward with the front legs, she bites the mid-vein until 

 it droops and hangs at right angles to the stem. The operation is not always done 

 in this way, however, for one female was observed standing on the petiole while at 



