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Curculio picipes is a most destructive insect in the 

 vinery as well as in the garden. This beetle is very 

 similar in figure to C. sulcatus, but smaller, ana 

 forms, with about twenty other indigenous species, a 

 genus called Otiorhynchus ; they are also nearly alike 

 in sculpture, but vary in tint, C. picipes being of a 

 clay-colour, the wing cases more or less clouded with 

 darker-coloured spots, and altogether it so much 

 resembles in tone the clods and bark under and be- 

 tween which this insect secretes itself by day, that it 

 is with difficulty detected. In the night these weevils 

 sally forth to feed upon wall-fruit trees and the vines 

 in hot-houses, either attacking the stems of the new 

 wood in April, which soon becomes black, or feeding 

 near the tips of the shoots. 



Every crevice in old garden-walls often swarms 

 with these weevils. Nothing would prove a greater 

 check to their increase than stopping all crevices, or 

 holes in walls, with mortar, plaster-of-Paris, or Ro- 

 man cement ; and the interior of hot-houses should 

 be annually washed with lime ; the old bark of the 

 vines under which they lurk should be stripped off 

 early in the spring, and the roots examined in Oc- 

 tober, where they exhibit any unhealthy symptoms 



