136 THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 
of sap and vigour, may be found to attack. Thus, one after 
another, a third or more of the stools may be destroyed 
through the repeated weakening of the bines. But the stools 
suffer from another mode of attack by the same insect; and 
this introduces me to another section of its life-history, which 
I have studied the more intently because my late friend, 
John Curtis, has, as I believe, in his admirable—I must say 
beautiful—work on ‘ Farm Insects’ left it entirely unnoticed. 
Greatly puzzled at the omission of a plant so important to 
farmers as the hop, and an insect so ruinously destructive as 
the hop-weevil, I thought I must have overlooked it, and 
have diligently consulted the excellent alphabetical index, 
and fail to find either the words “hop,” “hop-weevil,” 
“ Otiorhynchus notatus,” or any mention of an insect which 
is especially injurious to the hop. 1 therefore think a 
notice of its life-history may not be unacceptable to hop- 
growers, seeing that I have made it the object of especial 
attention. The insects may be seen united in pairs in almost 
every bop-garden in Herefordshire or Kent at the period of 
hop-picking, the bines being then removed, and the weevils 
thus exposed the more readily to view. Immediately aflter- 
wards the fecundated female enters the earth in close 
proximity with the stool, and in this she excavates or gnaws 
a little hollow, in which to deposit her eggs, which are from 
half a dozen to a dozen in number: these have no particular 
character, and are sure to escape notice unless purposely 
sought after, by the summary process of taking up the stool 
and shaking it over a sheet of dark paper, when the eggs— 
small, whitish, and nearly round-——-tumble out and are per- 
ceptible; otherwise, the eggs left to themselves soon hatch 
and become maggots, without any apparent head, or legs, or 
antennw, and almost colourless; indeed, they have a semi- 
transparent look, that rather reminds one of colourless jelly. 
They remain together in little companies or colonies all 
through the winter and spring, and probably families are the 
produce of one act of oviposition. They continue to grow all 
through the winter, feeding on the substance of the stool, in 
which they make very evident excavations; they continue 
thus until May, June, or July, when they separate and retire 
singly, for the great purpose of transformation. At this 
time they become chrysalids, very closely resembling the 
