340 NATURAL HISTORY. 



upon Wasps, both of the social and the solitary genera ; but the most aberrant of all the Stylopidae is 

 a kind which has been found in the abdomen of an insect of the order Hornoptera, from Borneo. 

 Eight species are found in England. 



SECTION TETRAMERA. 



We now arrive at the third great section of the order Coleoptera, distinguished from all others 

 by the atrophy of the fourth tarsal joint in all the feet, by which these members have only four 

 freely-articulating joints. The atrophied joint is in most cases extremely minute, and concealed in the 

 deep notch of the third joint, which latter is in the vast majority of the species bi-lobed, and clothed 

 beneath with a brush of minute hairs. The section is nearly equal to the Pentamera in the number 

 of its described species, and forms more than a third of the total contents of the order. All the 

 species are vegetable feeders. 



FAMILY CURCULIONIDTE. 



The CURCULIONID/E, or Weevils, are recognisable by the head being prolonged into a rostrum, or 

 " snout," which bears at its extremity the organs of the mouth. With the exception of the upper lip, 

 all the buccal organs are complete, and exhibit a high degree of development or specialisation, the 

 ligula, or tongue, being in a portion of the family concealed by the mentum. The antennae are 

 nearly always terminated by a club, and in the most numerous subdivisions are geniculate, or 

 elbowed, the first joint or scape being proportionally very long, and the remainder, or flagellum, being 

 set on at an angle to it : the joints between the scape and the club, which are often gradually 

 thickened, are called together the " funiculum." The abdomen is composed of five, rarely of six 

 segments, and the pronotum, or dorsal plate of the prothorax, is blended with the side pieces of 

 the pectoral segment. 



Weevils are among the commonest of all Beetles in temperate as well as tropical countries. About 

 12,000 species have been described, but it has been computed by a learned student of the 

 family that not fewer than 30,000 exist in nature. They attack, principally in their larva stage, 

 every part of vegetable tissues, and all forms of plant life, from cryptogams and the tenderest 

 shrubs to the largest forest-tree : buds, leaves, flowers, fruits, seeds, nuts, stem, bark, wood, pith, 

 and roots are all equally their prey, the species very generally confining themselves to their own 

 special variety of food, and many restricting themselves to one kind of plant, a habit which partly 

 accounts for their vast numbers ; for owing to this and their varied tastes, a score or more of distinct 

 species are accommodated by a single species of tree, and are adapted in structure and habits to the 

 limited conditions prescribed by such a mode of life. The adult Beetles are not in themselves, as 

 a rule, injurious, but the larvae, in very many cases, are very destructive, not only to forests and 

 orchards, but to seeds and cereals stored in warehouses. They are footless, cylindrical grubs, some- 

 what narrowed and curved behind, and of rather firm integuments, and are distinguishable from the 

 similar grubs of Lamellicorns, besides the absence of feet, by their atrophied antennae. Some few 

 species, leaf-miners, have straight bodies, and the larvae of the Calandra group, so destructive to 

 grain and to sugar and palm-tree plantations in the tropics, differ in being flexuous instead of 

 simply curved towards the tail. Most of them pass their transformations within the vegetable 

 substance which serves as their pabulum, constructing a sort of cocoon ; but some crawl forth and 

 bury themselves in the soil before changing to the pupa state. 



The classification of the vast multitude of forms constituting this important family has been 

 found a most difficult problem, and within the past twenty years it has been remodelled from its 

 foundations several times by entomologists who have made the subject their study. Previous to 

 that time, the obvious division into Weevils with straight antennae (Orthocera) and Weevils with 

 geniculated antennae (Gonatocera) was the prevailing system, the second or larger division being 

 again subdivided, according to the length of the rostrum. This classification was overthrown by 

 the celebrated systematist, Lacordaire, on the ground of its violating the really natural affinities 

 of the forms, and he divided the whole family into " legions," according to modifications in the 

 structure of the minute parts of the mouth. Still more recently, Dr. Leconte, of Philadelphia, 

 in a learned monograph on the Curculionidae of the United States, proposed an entirely different 

 system, grouping the family primarily according to sexual differences in the abdomen, and the 

 presence or absence of a lateral fold on the inner surface of the wing-cases. Under these chief 



