52 JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



roots, albeit in the larva form they must have lived upon them. 

 But the pot-Vines having no such spread of fibre, and being 

 much smaller in their strand of root, could not hold out against 

 these rodent larvae. One after another they ceased to grow, the 

 foliage turned yellow, and the young bunch flagged, and there was 

 no hope left for that poor Vine. Upon turning up the pots we 

 found sometimes the plant reduced to a tripod, just able to stand 

 on its stumps, and feebly trying to tiller again from them. The 

 ball would be thoroughly honeycombed, and the cells filled with 

 fat curled larvae, of a bluish white in the younger stage, of a 

 yellowish tint when fully grown, and turning in the pupa state 

 to a dirty red. How long they stay in the larva condition I 

 know not, but a few days suffice for the status pupillaris, and 

 I doubt whether entomologists are right in allowing them three 

 years underground, for I have found them in the pupa stage 

 when repotting Vines in February, which had been raised from 

 the eye the previous year. Before leaving this maggot (as the 

 gardeners call him) I may mention that I have taken more than 

 seventy from a single 16-pot, and that the eggs — if I have iden- 

 tified them — are laid in a cluster in the earth, and are very large 

 in proportion to the insect. 



Now for the cure. This is very difficult, and only to be 

 compassed by much patience. Prevention is the proper remedy ; 

 that I was partly aware of, and yet failed to ensure it. Last 

 year we collected in the weevil form a good-sized pickle-bottle 

 full ; this year, by removing the top soil of the vinery, which we 

 always do on that account every winter, and by perpetual perse- 

 cution, we are certainly getting ahead of them. But perhaps we 

 owe the reduction mainly to the clearing out of all pot-Vines, in 

 which they seem to wax most fat, as well as to the constant 

 searching of some hundred pots of Adiantum, placed as a 

 treacherous home for them. Every morning we could shake out 

 six or seven from the niches of old Adiantum crowns and trans- 

 fer them to our bottles. These, of course, were in the imago 

 form, and many in that stage were also taken in decayed Potatoes, 

 Carrots, Apples, &c. The great difficulty with this creature 

 is the resemblance of his colour to that of the soil ; also the fact 

 that he is very cunning, and not to be trapped with dainties, like 

 the slug, or even wood-louse. I think that he lives on green food 

 only during his weevil career, and goes to the Carrots and 

 Potatoes rather for lodging than for board, and therefore would 



