76 DR. HARRIS’S REPORT. April, 
proleg, or part which performs the office of a posterior foot, is sit- 
uated in a semicircular space at the base of the last segment. They 
are found under the bark of trees; the perfect insects, in June 
and July, in the same situation, and also upon flowers. 
In the Coleopterous insects which follow, all the feet have but 
four articulations. 
The genus Bruchus, appears to be chiefly appropriated to the 
Leguminous or Pea-flowering plants. The form of the body in this 
genus is short and convex ; the head is produced or elongated be- 
fore into a broad snout, and is suspended vertically below the thorax; 
the antenne are composed of eleven nearly cylindrical joints, which 
gradually increase in size to the last ; the elytra are short, and do not 
cover the posterior extremity, which is pointed ; the posterior thighs 
are thick. The perfect insects deposit their eggs upon the pods of 
plants, the pulse of which affords nourishment to the larve. These 
are little whitish grubs, without feet, and one only is to be found 
within a single seed, the interior of which is perforated by a hole, 
which is covered only by the thin hull, on the outside, and through 
which the perfect insect gnaws a passage sometime before it makes 
its escape. ‘This is not effected until about the time of the ger- 
mination of the seed, so that the existence of the insect ‘is extended 
through one year, during the winter months of which it remains, con- 
cealed in the seed, in a state of torpidity. 
These insects are far more common than has generally been 
imagined. ‘The Gleditsia, Robinia, Mimosa, Cassia, and various 
other native legumes have their distinct species. But the most re- 
markable is the Bruchus pisi, or pea-bug of North America. This 
insect has been introduced with American pease into England, and 
a part of Europe, but is not known in the North of Europe. Kalm, 
the Swedish traveller, tells us that he was greatly agitated on dis- 
covering some of these insects in a parcel of pease brought by him - 
from America, lest he should be the instrument of introducing so fatal 
an evil into his beloved country. Nor was his agitation unfounded ; 
for this noxious insect was at one time so destructive to the pea in 
our country as to put an end to its cultivation in many places. The 
pea-bug must originally have fed upon some of our indigenous vege- 
tables allied to the garden pea, which, however, it has deserted in 
