REPORT OF THE ENTOMOLOGIST AND BOTANIST 197 



SESSIONAL PAPER No. 16 



and it is of tlae greatest importance that pea growers and seed merchants should use 

 vigorously the well-known remedy of fumigating all seed peas before sowing them, or, 

 what is far preferable, as soon as they are harvested and threshed. One or two samples 

 have been recently sent in which were as badly infested by the Pea Weevil as in the 

 Avorst years four or five years ago. One of the important centres of the pea-seed trade 

 is the county of Prince Edward in Ontario. A few years ago peas in that county 

 were infested by the Pea Weevil to an extreme degree. Mr. J. D. Evans, of Trenton, 

 who has kindly kept me informed regularly with regard to this infestation, reports on 

 the season of 1907, as follows : ' I discusssed the matter of Pea Weevil injury with 

 Mr. W, P. Niles, of Wellington, one of our best authorities, and he tells me that the 

 Weevil is almost extinct in Prince Edward county at the present time, but owing to 

 the carelessness of farmers in attending to their seed peas, he will not be at all sur- 

 prised to see it again troublesome in the near future.' Mr. ISTiles said that he had 

 received some peas from Oshawa which were somjwhat infested but not very ser- 

 iously; but he had, however, a sample from Exeter, in Lambton county, which was 

 about as bad as it could be. The remedy above all others by which the Pea Weevil 

 has been kept in check in the past is the scrupulous fumigation of all seed peas. 

 There is still some confusion on the part of farmers as to what the Pea Weevil really 

 is. This is to a measure due to the senseless persistence of merchants and farmers in 

 speaking of it as the ' Pea Bug ' and consequently as almost every insect is called a 

 bug on this continent, as many specimens of peas injured by the Pea Moth are sent 

 in as having been attacked by the Pea Weevil, as those injured by the insect properly 

 so called. The injuries of these two insects are entirely different. The work of the 

 Pea Weevil is inside the seed and after the small brownish gray beetles, one- 

 fifth of an inch long and bearing two conspicuous black spots on the end of the body, 

 have emerged, there is on the side of the pea a small perfectly round hole. The work 

 of the caterpillar of the Pea Moth is an irregular ragged-edged cavity eaten in the 

 side of the seed while it is green. The life-history of both of these insects is perfectly 

 well known : The egg of the Pea Weevil is laid on the outside of the young green pod 

 and the grub on hatehing eats its way in and penetrates the nearest pea. Plere it 

 remains until full grown which is late in the summer time after the peas are ripe. 

 When peas are threshed as soon as they are ripe and the seed is fumigated at once 

 the grub of the Pea Weevil can be destroyed before it has eaten very much of the 

 seed; but if left untreated until later in the winter or until just before sowing, the 

 benefit is merely that the beetles inside the peas are killed. This is of much importance 

 but if the work is done as soon after harvesting as possible the injury to the seed is 

 reduced very much indeed. The larval life of a Pea Weevil is passed entirely inside 

 the pea it first entered. The egg is laid during June and the small grub has to pene- 

 trate the pod and locate itself inside a seed before this becomes too hard. The 

 development from a white fleshy grub to the pupal condition and the change to the 

 perfect beetle, all take place during the late summer and some of the beetles are fully 

 developed by about the middle of August, a few, in certain seasons, leave the peas in 

 the autumn or even as early as harvest time; but the regular habit of the insect is 

 for the beetles to remain in the seed until the following spring. Those vv^eevils which 

 emerge in the autumn pass the winter hidden away under rubbish or in barns, out- 

 houses, &c. Occasionally there is a wholesale emergence in the avitumn, and when this 

 takes place the numbers of Pea Weevil are enormously reduced. They are exposed 

 to many dangers which they would have escaped had they remained inside the peas. 

 Insect eating birds and mammals destroy many, and I have been shown, near Picton, 

 in Prince Edward county, Ont., thousands of the beetles which had crawled beneath 

 the shingles of an old bam and had died there, presumably killed by the cold of winter. 

 Those weevils which pass the winter safely outside, or those which have been sowji 

 in the spring with the seed iteas, fly to the fields, and for some time feed on the 

 foliage of the pea plants. As soon as the young green pods are formed the eggs are 

 laid and the grubs hatch soon afterwards. There is only one brood of this insect in 



