8 BULLETIN 1066, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 
DISTRIBUTION. 
This species was described and named nearly a century ago by 
Thomas Say. 7 Since Say's description was published entomologists 
have from time to time collected specimens of the beetle, but no 
data on the feeding habits of the species have found their way into 
print. There are records of beetles being collected at Allegheny. Pa., 
Topeka, Kans., Mendenhall, Miss., and Haulover, Fla. During the 
present investigation the writer has collected the species at Harris- 
burg and York, Pa.; Hagerstown, Cumberland, and New Windsor, 
Md. ; Morgantown and French Creek, W. Ya. ; Fincastle, Gala, Lick 
Run, Marion, McDowell, Oak Ridge, Pulaski, and Radford, Ya. ; and 
Black Mountain and Hickory, N. C. 
FOOD PLANTS. 
No food plants of this curculio seem to be known other than the 
black walnut (Juglans nigra) and butternut (./. cinerea). Of these 
two, the black walnut is much preferred, only one beetle of the species 
having been obtained in extensive rearings from butternut. Hamil- 
ton records taking the beetles by beating red oak sprouts, and the 
present writer has collected them from hickory trees growing close 
to black walnut. The occurrence of the beetles on both the red oak 
and hickory was probably accidental. 
NATURE AND EXTENT OF INJURY. 
Except for its different food plant, this species corresponds very 
closely in all its activities as well as in appearance with the butternut 
curculio. The adults feed on the tender shoots and leaf petioles and 
make oviposition scars and feeding punctures in young black walnuts 
similar to those made in butternuts by the other species. The larvae 
develop in young black walnuts and cause the nuts to drop, usually 
before they are half grown. The larvae are occasionally, but rarely, 
found burrowing in the tender shoots of black walnut. 
In seasons when black walnut trees are bearing a light crop 
of nuts a large percentage of the crop may become infested and 
drop, but in years of heavy fruitage the curculios do no more than to 
effect an unimportant thinning of the nuts. The following notes of 
field observations indicate degrees of infestation such as were fre- 
quently noted. On June 15, 1920, IT newly set black walnuts were 
picked from the lower branches of a tree growing in a parklike 
woods near Cumberland, Md. Of these 17 nuts, 16 contained cur- 
culio egg punctures and the other a feeding puncture. On the 16th 
of the same month 50 per cent of the nuts on trees growing along 
the highway at New Windsor, Md., were found infested. At French 
7 Say, Thomas. Entomology of north America. (Leconte ed.) v. 1, p. 295. 1S59. 
