THE CHESTNUT. ' 113 



more regular and symmetrical form, being nearly as long 

 as broad, tapering to a point. Shell smooth, dark 

 brown, with a slight pub^cence about the point. Usu- 

 ally three nuts in a bur ; an ideal variety in every respect. 



'There is a variety of the Japan chestnut recently 

 much lauded under the name of Mammoth or Burbank, 

 which is said to be of immense size, and as sweet as the 

 common American chestnut. 



Injurious Insects. — The chestnut tree is rarely 

 attacked by insects. It is true that grubs may occasion- 

 ally be found boring into the wood or cutting sinuous 

 burrows under the bark, but this is mainly in trees weak- 

 ened by exposure, in removing protecting companions, 

 as when removing forests, or by plowing up and destroy- 

 ing the roots, in cultivating the land about them ; but 

 the attacks of insects upon such specimens is nature's 

 way of getting rid of the feeble and least valuable, mak- 

 ing room for the healthy and strong. But my thirty 

 years' residence in a chestnut grove leads me to think 

 that this nut tree is exceedingly free from wood borers 

 of any kind. 



Entomologists, however, have noted several instances 

 of insect depredations upon individual trees, by a few 

 species of the longhorn beetles, three or four in all, but 

 these occur so rarely that they are scarcely worthy of 

 notice as pests of the chestnut. There are also several 

 species of caterpillars occasionally found feeding on the 

 leaves of this tree, also some sucking bugs or tree hop- 

 pers, and two or three kinds of plant lice, but none of 

 these have, as yet, become at all formidable enemies, or 

 likely to become so later. But the chestnut has one 

 enemy which is so abundant and destructive to the nuts 

 as to call for an extended notice. I refer to the common 

 native chestnut weevil {Balai^us carytripes, Boheman). 

 The little fat, white, round, legless grubs, nearly or quite 

 a half-inch long, must be familiar to every person who 

 8 



