380 Elementary Manual of Zoology. 
careful suervision, and even then it would at first be of the nature 
of an experiment, : 
Creulionide (Weevils).—This family of tetramerous beetles comprises 
an enormous number of species which, one way and another, doa 
vast amount of damage in India. The beetles can be easily recog- 
nised, as they have the front of the head produced into a proboscis 
furnished with a pair of elbowed antennw. The larve are white 
legless grubs, which tunnel into vegetable matter of all kinds. The 
palm weevil (Rhynchophorus) may be taken asa typical representative 
of the family. This insect destroys a large number of palm trees of 
all kinds. It is said to lay its eggs at the base of the leaf-stalk, on 
some spot where the stem has been injured, or in holes drilled by the 
rhinoceros-beetle (Orycfes). The larve tunnel their way through the 
heart of the trunk and often kill the tree outright. The pupa is 
formed in a cocoon of palm fibre, in the burrow. The beetles fly 
at night ; in the day time they are often to be found concealed in the 
holes made by the rhinoceros-beetle. As with other wood-boring 
insects, unhealthy trees are likely to be more subject to attack than 
healthy ones. 
The only remedies that seem to have been tried are the obvious 
ones of catching the beetles by hand and of burning trees that are 
badly infested by the larvae, soas to check the increase of the insect. 
Trees that are not very badly affected should be spared, as they are 
said in many cases to recover. 
Numerous timber trees in Indiahave been reported as tunnelled by 
Curculionids larve, much in the way that palm tiees are tunnelled 
by the species peculiar io them. We may notice :—the young 
mahogany trees destroyed by the larve of an undetermined weevil 
which tunnels beneath the bark, also chir (Pinus longifolia) and dhak 
(Butea frondvsa) said to be tunnelled by species of Astycus and 
Sipalus. The asparagus-like shoots of the hill bamboo (Dendro. 
calamus) have also been reported as destroyed by a large species of 
the genus Cyrtotrachelus, and these are likely to be mere isolated 
instances of what goes on in connection with many other forest 
growths, 
No less injurious are the weevils which attack seed and fruit 
in India. The seed-crop of s4l in the North-West Provinces has 
been reported as suffering to a very large extent? while compara- 
tively recently, in Darjeeling, ninety per cent, of the seed of Quercus 
pachyphylla has been recorded as similarly lost. 
1 1n 1867 Mr. R. Thompson wrote—“ I have reported beforein my letter No, 63, dated 
1st September 1866, that entire seed-crops of the Vaticg robusta were destroyed in 1863, 
and that partial destruction of them was observed since.” 
