26 TRANSACTIONS OF ROYAL SCOTTISH ARBORICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
microscope to reveal it—that for a time it was overlooked, and 
the members of this section were in consequence wrongly named 
tetramera (four-jointed), a name that is still often found in 
the books. 
ALLIES OF THE PIssoDES, AND THEIR Forest IMPORTANCE. 
The pseudo-tetramera section is divided into several sub- 
sections, one of which is termed the Rbyncophora, or weevils, 
whose characteristic is the possession of a rostrum or proboscis 
projecting from the front of the head. Of the families into which 
the weevils are broken up, one is termed the Curculionide, and to 
it the Pissodes and their allies belong. 
The Curculionide (using the term in a sense which will 
exclude at the one end the Bruchidz, whose well-known grubs 
are so often found in leguminous seeds, and at the other end the 
Scolytide, the mother-beetles of which bore in trees tunnels, along 
the sides of which eggs are laid) may be defined as rounded or 
oval beetles possessing a rostrum or beak, and distinctly elbowed 
antenn ; while the females do not bodily enter into the tree for 
the purpose of egg-laying like the Scolytidi, but lay their eggs on 
the tree externally (rarely), or in a hole bored from the outside 
(commonly), or, it may be, lay them directly in the soil. The 
Curculionidee larvee may be recognised as fleshy rounded bent 
grubs, with no legs, with biting jaws, and with a scaly, 
chitinised head. 
This family contains a very large number of genera, many of 
which are very important from the point of view of the economic 
entomologist, and some of them are very dangerous enemies of 
the forester. The harm may be done by the grubs, more rarely 
by the mature beetles, and rarest of all by both. Among the 
forms with destructive grubs is the genus Otiorhynchus, whose 
larvee, hatching out from eggs laid in roots or in the ground in 
their neighbourhood, gnaw the external surface of these and 
cause decay; our genus Pissodes; the grub of Cryptorhynchus 
lapathi, so harmful to the alder; the leaf-mining larve of the 
lively Orchestes fagi; the grub of the long-nosed Balaninus, 
familiar in nuts; and the Anthonomous larve, so troublesome to 
the apple-grower. 
Harmful in the mature stage as beetle is the pestiferous Pine 
Weevil (Hylobius abietis). 
