GREENHOUSE PESTS 113 



have imagined, whenever there is anything good to have, 

 Weevils are sure to be to the front. Two kinds are shown 

 in the illustration, R. betuleti and O. sulcatus. The latter 

 is the commonest and is about | inch long and black, with 

 yellow hairs. It is unable to fly. The grub is creamy 

 white, with brown hairs and the pupa of the same colour- 

 ing. The eggs are laid in the summer months in the 

 earth near the roots of the vine, wherein the grubs gnaw 

 and tunnel about, feeding on the tender, succulent parts 

 during the whole of the autumn. Adult weevils emerge, 

 the following spring, and subsist upon the young leaves^ 

 for it must be remembered that, as is the case with so 

 many beetles, the parent insects are often quite as harm- 

 ful as the hungry grubs themselves. Most of the Coleop- 

 tera have a very businesshke mouth and jaws, as con- 

 trasted with, say, the butterflies and moths, which are 

 haustellate, i.e. when full-grown have merely a tubular 

 proboscis with which they suck the honey from flowers. 

 Again, the beetles are a long-lived race, whereas butter- 

 flies have only a short existence, except with those kinds 

 which hatch out in the autumn, go to sleep in some old 

 barn during the winter, and come out with the first warm 

 days of spring to breed and die. 



The Vine Weevil, when disturbed, feigns death ; it is a 

 difficult insect to kill ; fumigation, unless drastic such as 

 cyanide, has Httle effect upon it. This creature can also 

 withstand almost any extremes of heat or cold. It may 

 be frozen as hard as a pebble and thawed back again as 

 many times as you like, but the old-fashioned remedy 

 of shaking them off and dropping them into fiercely 

 boihng water is simple and certain. As the Vine Weevil 

 cannot fly, its ingress into a greenhouse must be by way 

 of doors or window-sashes, and a sprinkling of naphthalene 

 at these points and the use of fresh creosote at suitable 

 times will ward them off. If they are already in the soil 

 and the plant is badly attacked, soil dressing and a con- 

 stant look-out for the adults is necessary, and boiling 



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