1 82 TRANSACTIONS OF ROYAL SCOTTISH ARBORICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



plants to the grass, and there feign death in the fashion 

 characteristic of so many of the Curculionidae. In this position 

 they are difficult to find. 



At first we devoted about four hours per day to the search for 

 the insects. Later, when they became less numerous, an 

 occasional day's work was all that was required. The period 

 between the 13th and 19th of May was that in which the 

 weevils appeared to be most numerous and most voracious. 

 Occasionally during this period as many as ten insects were 

 picked from a single plant. The infestation ceased about 

 2nd June, and during the whole period of its duration the number 

 of perfect weevils destroyed was approximately fourteen thousand 

 nine hundred. The plants which suffered most were the Scots 

 fir, and afterwards, in the order in which they stand — spruce, 

 European larch, and Japanese larch. The damage was most 

 pronounced in the case of plants surrounded by a rank growth of 

 grass, and in the case of those round which the turf had not 

 been inverted at the time of planting. On the other hand, those 

 found growing on an area where the turf had been burned 

 previous to planting, were as a rule only slightly damaged. Oak 

 and birch saplings, together with several young Prunus pissardi 

 and other fruit trees, were found to have been no less severely 

 bitten than the conifers, proving that, in the absence of conifers, 

 the insect can subsist, for a time at least, on young hardwoods. 



In the present attack hand-gathering, in spite of its obvious 

 drawbacks, may be said to have given splendid results. 



In addition to measures of destruction directed against the 

 imago, it is necessary to attack the insect also in the larval 

 stage, especially by uprooting and burning sickly plants, and 

 by barking and otherwise treating the stools where timber has 

 been felled. In the course of 6 days, 4 men engaged in 

 collecting larvae from the stools accounted for 5790, which 

 gives an average of about 55 per stool. If we assume 

 that the trees stood at the rate of 200 per acre, this would 

 work out at about 11,000 collected from every acre. Several 

 weeks were devoted to this work, and its effect may be gathered 

 from the figures given. The larvae, which are about three-quarters 

 of an inch in length, white and wrinkled, with brown heads 

 and strong mandibles, live in the cambium region in sickly trees or 

 in those recently dead. In the stools of trees which had been cut 

 during the preceding August, and were stripped of their bark 



