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CHAPTER CXVI. 



GRANARY PESTS. 



grain weevil (Calandra or Sitophilus Oryzae). This 

 insect does a good deal of damage to stored rice, 

 wheat, barley, maize, juar, &c., 3 to 4 seers per maund 

 being eaten up by the weevil, in course of a year. 



1,232. Each female lays about 150 eggs, generally 

 one egg being laid on one grain of cereal. She cuts a 

 minute crevice on the grain, lays the egg in it, covers up 

 the crevice with dust &c., and then goes on to lay other 

 eggs. Throughout t! e cold weather and hot weather this 

 goes on, the weevils having come out during the preceding 

 rainy season from grains stored in the same godown or 

 vessel and remaining hidden all this time in cracks and 

 crannies of the godown or the vessel. The egg is almost 

 too minute to see with the naked eye. It hatches and the 

 grub hatching out goes on burrowing inside the grain and 

 eating into its substance, leaving a minute aperture behind 

 it, to enable it to breathe. In a few weeks the grub changes 

 into a pupa, and for a while remains dormant until it becomes 

 a full formed weevil when it bites its way out of the grain. 

 The breeding goes on all the year round and only quicker 

 in the rains when the grains are softer and readily eaten 

 through by the grubs. Every egg laid before the rainy 

 season commences, gets the chance of becoming a weevil ; 

 so although we may find a few weevils in the cold and the 

 hot weather, we find the godown swarming with them to- 

 wards the end of the rainy season. The time taken for 

 the egg to develop into the perfect insect is about two 

 months, though the time required for development depends 

 on the temperature. 



1,233. The godown or the vat where the grain is 



