WEEVILS. 223 



The insect attacks woods of all ages, but prefers old to 

 young growth, and especially trees bordering the wood, or 

 isolated trees, as shelter trees in a regeneration felling. It 

 appeared in the Palatinate in 1869 in such numbers that in 

 many beech woods scarcely a leaf was left uninjured. In the 

 Spessart, in 1888, the beetle seriously reduced the rich beech- 

 mast. In 1898, the beech leaf-miner was extremely abundant 

 in beech woods, all over Germany. It is common in Great 

 Britain. No protective measures other than the encourage- 

 ment of insectivorous birds are practicable. The beetle is too 

 active to be captured in numbers. 



6. Orcliestes quercus, L. 



Beetle reddish-yellow, covered with grey hair, and with black 

 eyes and breast, hinder thighs with 

 serrate teeth. It attacks the oak 

 just as the preceding beetle attacks 

 the beech. It is commonest on 

 suppressed oak undergrowth, under 

 Scots pines, etc. 



7. Cryptorrhynchus lapathi, L. 



a. Description. 



Beetle 7 to 8 mm. long, and very Fig ^ _ Cryptorrhynchm 

 characteristically coloured ; thorax lapathi, L. 



and the basal two-thirds of the 



elytra dark brown or black, with patches of erect black scales ; 

 flanks of the thorax, the anterior part of the under surface, 

 the apex of the elytra and the femora thickly covered with 

 white scales. The rostrum can be folded into a furrow under 

 the thorax. 



I. Life-history. 



The beetle flies at the end of April and in May. The eggs 

 are laid in May, in small holes gnawed in the bark of the 

 stem, or of the branches of alders, etc. 



The larvae appear 14 days later, in May or June, and pupate 

 as a rule in autumn in their galleries. The beetle emerges in 



