THE STATE ENTOMOLOGIST. 



47 



the opinions of another as his own, and by his adopting such opin- 

 ions, whether good or bad, without due credit. Even Noerdlinger in 

 his " Kleinen Feunde der Landwirtschaft," though he cites the excel- 

 lent and original observations of Taschenberg, feels himself called 

 upon to doubt their correctness, and himself inclines to believe that 

 the female may put her eggs in the pea. In Packard's Guide, the 

 eggs are erroneously said to be laid on the blossoms. 



The true natural history of the Pea-weevil may be thus briefly 

 told. The beetles begin to appear as soon as our peas are in 

 bloom, and when the young pods form, the female beetles gather 

 upon them and deposit their eggs on any part whatever of the sur- 

 face without attempting to insert the eggs within the pod. 



The eggs, (Fig. 16,) are deep yellow, 0.035 inch long, three times 



as long as wide, fusiform, pointed in front, blunt behind, but larger 



[Fig- 1 6 -] anteriorly than posteriorly. They are fastened to the pod 



by some viscid fluid which dries white and glistens like silk. 



As the operation of depositing is only occasionally noticed 



during cloudy weather, we may safely assume that it takes 



place for the most part by night. If pea vines are carefully 



examined in this latitude any time during the month of June, 



the pods will often be found to have from one to fifteen or 



'(Jiff twenty such eggs upon them, and the black head of the future 



larva may frequently be noticed through the delicate shell. 



As already stated, the eggs are deposited on all parts of the pod, 

 and the mother beetle displays no particular sagacity in the number 

 which she consigns to each, for I have often counted twice as many 

 eggs as there were young peas, and the larvae from some of these eggs 

 would of course have to perish, as only one can be fully developed 

 in each pea. The newly hatched larva is of a deep yellow color with 

 a black head, and it makes a direct cut through the pod into the near- 

 est pea, the hole soon filling up in the pod, and leaving but a mere 

 speck, not so large as a pin-hole, in the pea. The larva feeds and 

 grows apace and generally avoids the germ of the future sprout, per- 

 haps because it is distasteful, so that most of the buggy peas will 

 germinate as readily as those that have been untouched. When full 

 ^ F,s * lr, l grown this larva presents the 



appearance of Figure 17, <?, 

 (after Curtis) and with won- 

 derful precognition of its fu- 

 ture wants, eats a circular hole 

 on one side of the pea, and 

 leaves only the thin hull as a 

 covering. It then retires and 

 lines its cell with a thin and 

 smooth layer of paste, pushing aside and entirely excluding all ex- 

 crement, and in this cell it assumes the pupa state (Fig. 17, d, after 

 Curtis,) and eventually becomes a beetle, which, when ready to issue, 



