244 INSECT TRANSFORMATIONS. 



petals of the flowers, drawing up the whole flower 

 into a cluster by means of their web. The bloom 

 thus becomes destroyed, and the grub falls to the 

 ground, where it lays itself up in the chrysalide state; 

 and in the autumn afterwards we find the weevil 

 renewed, which again perforates the buds, and causes 

 a similar destruction in the following spring. Mr 

 Knight, in his treatise on the apple, mentions a beetle 

 which commits great destruction on the apple-trees in 

 Herefordshire; but I do not think it the same as the 

 one I have described above, and which is very common 

 in the gardens near London.'* Salisbury's weevil 

 is probably the .Anthonomits Pomorum ol Germar; 

 and Knight's, his Polijdrusus Mali. Another weevil 

 (Rhijnchites Bacchus, Herbst), one of our most 

 splendid but not very common native insects, bores 

 into the stone of the cherry, &c, while it is young 

 and soft, and deposits an egg there, as the nut weevil 

 does in the nut. 



Perhaps the most voracious grub on record is that 

 of a large and beautiful beetle (Calosoma syco- 

 phanta, Weber), which is rare in Britain. It is 

 sometiines found in the nests of the processionary and 

 other gregarious caterpillars, so gorged with those it 

 has devoured that it can scarcely move without 

 bursting. Not contented with this prey alone, how- 

 ever, the younger grubs are said ' often to take ad- 

 vantage of the helpless inactivity into which the glut- 

 tony of their maturer comrades has thrown them, 

 and from mere wantonness, it should seem, when in 

 no need of other food, pierce and devour them.'t It 

 is a familiar occurrence to those who breed insects to 

 find caterpillars, whose natural food is leaves, devour- 

 ing others in the same nurse-box; and without any 



* Salisbury's Hints on Orchards, p. 92. 

 t Kirby and Speuce, vol. i, p. 277. 



