64 WEEVIL. 



tained the depth sufficient for its convenient re- 

 sidence during the long period of its winter con- 

 cealment, it lies dormant for eight months, and 

 then, casting its skin, commences a chrysalis, of 

 the same general shape and appearance with the 

 rest of the beetle tribe; and it is not till the be- 

 ginning of August that it arrives at its complete 

 or ultimate form, at which period it casts off the 

 skin of the chrysalis, creeps to the surface, and 

 commences an inhabitant of the upper world. 

 During -this state it breeds, and, like the major 

 part of the insect race, enjoys, for a short time, 

 the pleasures of a more enlarged existence. As a 

 species it is distinguished by its brown colour, 

 and the great length and slenderness of its curved 

 snout: it measures nearly half an inch in length 

 from the tip of the snout to that of the body. 



Dr. Darwin, in his elegant poem The Botanic 

 Garden, thus beautifully expresses the egress of 

 this insect from the cavity of the nut. 



" So sleeps in silence the Curculio, shut 

 In the dark chambers of the cavern'd nut, 

 Erodes with ivory beak the vaulted shell 

 And quits on filmy wings it narrow cell." 



To this genus belongs the destructive insect 

 peculiarly called the Weevil, which is the Curculio 

 granarius of Linnaeus: its colour is an uniform 

 dull chesnut or reddish brown, and its length 

 scarcely two lines : the female insect perforates a 

 grain of wheat, and in it deposits an egg, or two 

 at most, (a grain of wheat being incapable of 



