by this species during the night, when they come out to feed, 

 and in the day they secrete themselves in chinks in the walls, 

 under stones, bricks, clods of earth, &c. They are particularly 

 injurious to wall fruit, and also to vines in hot-houses; but 

 it is O. sulcatus, Mr. F. Walker informs me, which injures the 

 vines in Lancashire, by eating the bark, and the larvae feed 

 upon the roots. 



Dr. Lindley, I think, recommended some years since that 

 the boughs of infected trees should be brushed or shaken over 

 sieves in the night, and that the beetles thus collected might 

 be immediately killed in hot water, and, if I mistake not, large 

 quantities have been thus obtained in nursery grounds in Nor- 

 folk. 



O. tenebricosus is another destructive species, as will be seen 

 by the following extract from a note addressed to Mr. Dale 

 by the Rev. J. M. Colson, rector of Puddle Hinton : " I have 

 sent you a few specimens," he says, "of a beetle hitherto un- 

 known to any of my neighbours, that has appeared this sum- 

 mer in myriads in the gardens of Lord Eldon at Encombe, 

 destroying the roots of every vegetable and smaller plant, such 

 as strawberries, raspberries, gooseberries and currants." I 

 presume it was the larvae that did the mischief, which afterwards 

 produced the beetles. 



I well remember finding some grubs in a strawberry bed a 

 few years since which cut through the runners, but at that 

 time I suspected they were dipterous, and now have no means 

 of ascertaining if they belonged to the Otiorhynchi. I have 

 little doubt that it is the larva of O. picipes also, which kills 

 the auriculas and polyanthuses. Dr. Maclean informs me, in 

 his garden at Colchester, which they effect by eating through 

 the roots close to the leaves. 



Fortunately the Otiorhynchi are destroyed by the Cercerides 

 (fol. 269.), and thus Nature has put a check upon them. In 

 the month of August last, when I was at Boulogne, Mr. Clif- 

 ton showed me innumerable holes in the gravel walks of his 

 garden formed by Cerceris Icctal and at that time a consider- 

 able number of females were entering them : on digging up 

 one of the nests we found five or six specimens of O. scabrosiis 

 at the depth of nearly a foot, which had been buried by the 

 Cerceris as food for its larvae, and nothing but the shells were 

 left. Mr. W. Clifton informed me that he had observed 

 large specimens of the Cerceris at an earlier period, burying 

 a larger species of Curculio. Mr. Dale has also detected them 

 carrying O. sulcatus alive between their legs. 



There are nineteen species of Otiorhynchi recorded in the 

 Guide, and the one figured I found under stones on moun- 

 tains, I believe, in the vicinity of Ambleside as well as in Scot- 

 land, in June and July. 



The Plant is Fragaria vesca. Wood Strawberry. 



