22 



once admitted to our cabinets, and acknowledged to be of equal 

 interest with Scotch or Manx, or any other local forms. I know 

 that I am treading on tender ground. It is an attack, so to speak, 

 on vested interests, and jour vested interest — as Bottom would say 

 — is a fearful wild fowl. Nevertheless, I am obliged to my friend, 

 Mr. Billups, for affording me this text, and I trust that he has 

 boldly placed his little Gallic friend side by side with its more 

 aristocratic English neighbour (if he possess one), and that they 

 are neither of them the worse for it. 



Another interesting subject which has been carefully investi- 

 gated by both Mr. Perkins and Mr. Billups, is that of the so-called 

 granary iveevils, and the havoc created by them in stored cereals 

 all over the world. Mr. Billups mentioned that out of three and a 

 half ounces of corn-dust swept into a box from one Mr. Fitch's 

 storehouses, he collected no less than 1,554 living insects ; add to 

 this the great number of artful ones that escaped, the dead, and a 

 large quantity of larvae, and one can only feel too thankful, on 

 Mr. Fitch's account, that they did not eat up barn and all. Nor 

 is this feeling at all lessened when we are told by De Geer that a 

 single pair of the true corn -weevil (Calandra granaria), will produce 

 (among themselves and their descendants), in one year 2 3, GOO indi- 

 viduals. In the sweepings examined by Mr. Billups there were 

 only seventeen of this insect — 0. oryzae, the rice-weevil, numbering 

 650. In addition to these there were eleven different species of 

 small beetles — Hypophlceus depressus swelling up to a total of 791. 

 I think we must all envy, and should endeavour to emulate, the 

 patient industry with which Mr. Billups separated these 1,554 tiny 

 insects into species, named them, and counted them up, and we 

 shall look forward with interest to the supplementary note that he 

 promises us on the same subject. 



Mr. Perkins, in a subsequent paper, stated that in an old 

 record he had discovered the names of two other small beetles 

 commonly attendant upon C. granaria, and not mentioned either 

 by Mr. Billups or Mr. Fitch, viz., Cucujus monilicornis and 

 0. testaceus. These, added to those named by the above two 

 gentlemen, make a total of no less than nineteen different species 



