COMMON ENGLISH BEAN-SEED BEETLE. 5 
South Africa (where, as well as in the United States, it is to be found), 
I add to the following observations on our own special Bean-seed pest 
some notes regarding the more destructive kind brought up to date of 
writing these lines. 
“« Bruchus rufimanus is the common Bean Weevil of England... . 
It is both a common and destructive insect.’ * The species is con- 
sidered to range throughout central and southern Europe, Syria, 
Egypt, and all of northern Africa, and also occurs at Monte Video, 
South America. The above-named wide distribution accounts for the 
great extent to which it occurs in imported Broad Beans, a subject on 
which especial enquiries were sent me during the past season. 
The beetles are rather less than the sixth of an inch in length, and 
of the shape figured at 1 and 2 (nat. size and magnified); the ground 
colour black, but with some degree of clothing of short brown hairs. 
The thorax (or fore body) has a white spot at each of the hinder 
angles, and a triangular spot between them. The wing-cases have a 
brown stripe down the suture, and outside this four white spots on the 
disc placed on a deep black longitudinal line (see figure); they are also 
sprinkled with small dots of white hair. The apical segments of the 
abdomen (which is not covered by the wing-cases) is grey. The 
antenne dark, with the four joints nearest the head rusty colour; and 
the fore pair of legs is also rusty,— whence the name of rufimanus, or 
red-handed. The wings are ample. When the beetles are fresh, the 
markings show clearly, but very often they have been so much rubbed 
that the brown and white ‘‘pattern,’’ so to call it, is removed, and 
little but the black ground of the wing-cases is to be seen. 
The method of attack is for the beetle to fly to the blossoming 
Beans, and to lay its eggs on the young seed-vessel in the centre of the 
Bean-flower whilst it is still quite in embryo state (not large enough to 
be called a pod). From these eggs the grubs soon hatch, and make 
their way into the growing Beans. These grubs (or larve) are fleshy, 
wrinkled across, thick in shape, and have a small, horny, rusty-coloured 
head, and (so far as has been recorded) they are footless. Hach 
maggot gnaws a round gallery into the growing Bean; sometimes there 
may be only one tunnel, sometimes several; and in its tunnel, amongst 
the dust and dirt consequent on its gnawings, the grub turns to the 
chrysalis, and thence to the beetle condition. But before it changes 
to the chrysalis state, it gnaws its gallery right up to the skin of the 
Bean, not through it; so that this circular bit of skin remains as a 
little round cap at the end of the burrow, just sinking in a little from 
the substance of the Bean having been hollowed out behind it, and 
when the time for the beetle to leave the Bean has arrived, it has 
* «Seventh Report of Injurious and other Insects of the State of New York, 
U.8.A.,’ by Dr. J. A. Lintner, State Entomologist, Albany, N. Y., 1891, p. 280, 
