376 THE AMERICAN NATURALIST. [VOL. XXXIV. 
The flag weevil (Mononychus vulpeculus Fabr.) has already 
been mentioned as a denizen and, to some extent, a destroyer 
of Iris flowers. The height of the season for the adult weevils 
is the blossoming time of the flowers. Even then they are not 
very active; I have found them flying freely from clump to 
clump only in the hot sunshine of early afternoon. They will 
dodge around the base of the flower like a squirrel around a 
branch when a hand approaches, but they will rarely fly; they 
will oftener fall to the earth or into the water. The females 
when ovipositing are still more shy and difficult to observe. I 
was able to see the details of the process of egg laying on only 
‘one day —a very windy day, when everything about the wee- 
vil was in motion, and my own movements were, therefore, less 
noticed. The mother beetle rapidly gnaws a little hole through 
the wall of the ovary and, taking a few steps forward, inserts 
an egg into it. She then walks a little way and repeats the 
process or gnaws aimless little pits over the surface of the 
ovary The wounds thus made are quickly stopped by the dis- 
charge from mucilage cells, which are abundant in the walls of 
the ovary. The egg is often inserted into the external face of 
an ovule. 
When the egg hatches, the larva at once begins a shallow 
furrow across the outer ends of the developing seeds, travers- 
ing from two to ten of them. Thus it spends the larger part of 
its larval life, doing no damage whatever. In fact, during this 
stage it is in considerable danger of being eaten, along with 
the seeds, by grasshoppers or Mamestra larva. Entering upon 
its last larval stage, the larva burrows downward and begins 
feeding on the softer tissues of the center of the seeds. It 
eats voraciously and grows with marked rapidity. It burrows 
parallel with the axis of the capsule through the center of from 
three to five seeds, leaving of them only empty rings. Its 
growth is completed and all its damage is done during this 
stage, which lasts only about a week. Then it transforms 
1 Possibly these blind pits may serve for the confusion of the weevil’s parasites. 
I found a little egg, presumably that of a parasite, just within the entrance to a 
hole, at the bottom of which a weevil egg was lying. Mr. J. Hamilton found the 
parasites (n. Mews, vol. v, pp. 287, 288, 1894). 
