132 MONTANA EXPERIMENT STATION. 



COMMON NAMES. 



This insect has been known in Mont, under the name of straw-ber- 

 ry-weevil, but since there are a number of other weevils that prey up- 

 on the strawberry, it would be advisable to use the more specific name 

 iirst adopted by Prof. Weed, viz. : "The Strawberry Crown Girdler." 

 In a reference in Insect Life (Vol. V, page 46) it is stated that in 

 some localities the insect is known as the "graveyard bug." Profes- 

 sor Wickham, writing in Societas Entomologica (IX, page 131, 

 1894), states that Dr. Hamilton writing to him from Alleghany, 

 Pa., stated: 'T took this beetle in a cemetery here in 1875 and it 

 was then apparently abundant. A couple of years afterwards it was 

 excessively so in the same cemetery but now (1894) much less com- 

 mon than formerly." It may be that the beetle contracted the name 

 of "graveyard bug" from its occurrence in the cemeteries of Alle- 

 ghany as here quoted, but the literature does not make this point 

 clear. There can be no reason why the insect should occur more 

 abundantly in graveyards than elsewhere. Dr. Lugger in his short 

 account of the beetle in Bulletin 66 of the Minnesota Experiment 

 Station (1899) uses the common name, "The Pitchy-Legged Otio- 

 rhynchus." This name is obviously less desirable than "The Straw- 

 berry Crown Girdler." 



FOOD PLANTS. 



The following is a list of the plants on which this beetle feeds as 

 fchown by the literature of the species: borage (Cook), muskmellon 

 (Webster), strawberry (Weed), currant (Mrs. Wickham), roots 

 of blue grass (Webster), apple (?) (Lugger). The writer has found 

 the larvae feeding on the roots of Potcntilla glandulosa, a plant not dis- 

 tantly related to the strawberry, and has found the beetles hiding 

 in abundance in the stools of this plant. The species was also taken 

 feeding in the adult stage on the foliage of raspberry. ]\Ir. Burle 

 Jones foiuid the roots of the plant commonly known as the "big 

 root" or "balsam root" {Bahamorhisa sagatata) to be commonly at- 

 tacked. Lie found fully one hundred weevils about one plant of 

 this species and saw abundant signs of their attacks in other plants 

 of this kind. Mrs. Williams of Missoula reports having found the 

 larvae in great abundance on the roots of timothy grass. 



