74 COLEOPTEEA. 



There are some of the long-snouted weevils which inhabit 

 nuts of various kinds. Hence they are called nut-weevils, 

 and belong chiefly to the modern genus Balardnus, a name 

 that signifies living or being in a nut. The common nut- 

 weevil of Europe lays her eggs in the hazelnut and filbert, 

 having previously bored a hole for that purpose with her 

 long and slender snout, while the fruit is young and tender, 

 and dropping only one egg in each nut thus pricked. A 

 little grub is soon hatched from the egg, and begins immedi- 

 ately to devour the soft kernel. Notwithstanding this, the 

 nut continues to increase in size, and, by the time that it is 

 ripe and ready to fall, its little inhabitant also comes to its 

 growth, gnaws a round hole in the shell, through which it 

 afterwards makes its escape, and burrows in the ground. 

 Here it remains unchanged through the winter, and in the 

 following summer, having completed its transformations, it 

 comes out of the ground a beetle. 



In this country weevil-grubs are very common in hazel- 

 nuts, chestnuts, and acorns ; but I have not hitherto been 

 able to rear any of them to the beetle 



Fig- 38i • 



state. The most common of the nut-wee- 

 vils known to me appears to be the Rhyn- 

 ehcenus (JBalaninus) nasicus of Say (Fig. 

 38), the long-snouted nut- weevil. Its form 

 is oval, and its ground color dark brown ; 

 but it is clothed with very short rust-yellow 

 flattened hairs, which more or less conceal 

 its original color, and are disposed in spots 

 on its wing-covers. The snout is brown 

 and polished, longer than the whole body, as slender as a 

 bristle, of equal thickness from one to the other, and slightly 

 curved; it bears the long elbowed antennae, which are as 

 fine as a hair, just behind the middle. This beetle measures 

 nearly three tenths of an inch in length, exclusive of the 

 snout. Specimens have been found paired upon the hazel- 

 nut-tree in July, at which time probably the eggs are laid. 



