Leng: Nut and Acorn Weevils 79 



7. A number of acorn weevils with beaks short in both sexes, 

 wherein specific limits are still uncertain. I believe these also 

 feed on annual-fruiting oaks, but from the numerous taxonomic 

 errors, records based simply on beating, not breeding, the habit 

 of changing food plant, etc., the records are confusing. It is 

 very difficult to distinguish females of this seventh group from 

 males of the fifth, if indeed there are actually two groups in 

 nature. 



Scientific entomologists made the first attempt to provide Latin 

 names for these species in the eighteenth century when Fabricius 

 described B. prohoscideus. Because he gave the length of the 

 beak as twice that of the body this name is now apphed to the 

 larger chestnut weevil, but not without dispute, for Say thought 

 it might be a synonym of Curculio daviesi Swed. Boheman 

 seized the opportunity to substitute caryatrypes in which he has 

 been followed by Horn, Casey, and others actuated by some 

 doubt as to the American origin of the Fabrician type, while a 

 few apparently correct the Fabrician etymology and write 

 prohoscoideiis. The second attempt was made by Say, who 

 followed Fabricius, describing four species, in 1831, and doing it 

 so badly that Dr. Geo. H. Horn states the species cannot be 

 recognized from what he said of them. Say sent specimens to 

 Gyllenhal, in Europe, who redescribed his species in 1836, and 

 from their joint efforts B. nasicus and B. rectus of Say hold 

 an uncertain place in the literature. B. nasicus with an arcuate 

 beak at most as long as the body cannot be a chestnut weevil, for 

 all have beaks longer than body and moreover the range of the 

 chestnut barely, if at all, reaches the southwestern corner of 

 Indiana in which New Harmony, where Say lived at the time, 

 is located. It has always been regarded, and probably correctly, 

 as an acorn weevil ; but from B. nasicus as the name of the acorn 

 weevil have been subtracted all the acorn weevils that have been 

 since described, and hence there would remain but few specimens 

 to call nasicus and those with such negative characters that the 

 position of the second species ever described remains more du- 

 bious than it should be. 



