i 7 8 



OTHER DENIZENS OF THE WOODS 



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prolonged into a beak with the mouth at the extremity, into grooves in the sides 

 of which the antennae can be neatly folded away. Weevil-larvae have an indistinct 

 head, devoid of feelers and eyes, and are almost without feet ; they live on plants, 

 particularly on fruit. The large pinerweevil (Hylobius abietis) is a fairly common 

 species, living especially on pines, but also on other coniferous and some deciduous 

 trees, though it deposits its eggs only in coniferous wood. It is dull blackish 

 brown in colour, with yellowish hairs, the thorax being narrowed in front, the 

 elytra striped with large square specks, with the intervals roughly wrinkled and 

 marked with two curved yellow bands, while the legs are pitch} - black. As a larva 

 it does little damage, but as a beetle it is one of the most destructive insects of the 

 forest, eating the buds and bark of firs and pines, and thereby attracting the 

 bark-beetle, which is the worst enemy of such trees. H. pinastri, also found in 



fir-plantations, has red 

 legs; the thorax being 

 rounded at the sides, 

 and the markings not 

 • yellow but ashy white. 

 It is half an inch long, 

 while If. abietis ranges 

 • from one half to three- 

 quarters of an inch. 

 Another species de- 

 structive to pines is the 

 white - spotted trunk- 

 beetle (Pissodesn oh ilu s), 

 somewhat smaller than 

 the last, and entirely 

 covered with greyish 

 white scales : the thorax 

 is spotted with white 

 and there is a whitish 

 scutellum, while the 

 elytra are spotted and 

 striped with a pair of greyish white bands. Its larva, which apparently differs 

 from the larva of the pine-weevil only in its slightly smaller size, lives under the 

 bark and in the wood of young firs, while the beetles bore into the trees themselves 

 and deposit their eggs in the holes. In autumn they bury themselves in larger holes, 

 which they make in the tree right down to the sapwood. The blue vine-weevil 

 (Rhyncli iti.i hduh'ti) destroys the leaves, not only of vines, but of birch, pear, and 

 other trees. This weevil, which in 1756 destroyed near Roth in Baden almost 

 nine-tenths of the vintage, often appears in May and June on birches, and later, 

 when their leaves are too hard, betakes itself to the vines. On the latter it bites 

 through the young shoots about a finger-length from the tips, so that the upper- 

 part hangs down and withers. It also devours the upper layer of the leaves in 

 strips, so that they become transparent at such places. From May to July this 

 weevil rolls up the leaves of the plants on which it lives into the shape of a cone, 



LARGE PINE-WEEVIL. 



