Rhynchophora. INSECTS. Bkuchus. 
226 
PSEUDO-TETRAMEEA. 
In these the tarsi are apparently four-jointed, although 
on examination a fifth will be discovered. 
RHYNCHOPHORA {Snouted Beetles), 
A vast set of insects, upwards of ten thousand of 
which have been described. 
Mr. Wollaston bas published an interesting paper* 
on the sounds made by some of the Curculionidse. He 
noticed this habit first when in Teneriffe in a species 
of Acalles, and thus narrates it ; — “ I had been accus- 
tomed to find such a number of insects in the dead 
branches of the various Euphorbias, that my attendant 
also had discovered, from time to time, the locus quo 
of many a rarity by imitating my method of research ; 
and, to use his own expressions, he was about in this 
instance to throw away these rotten stems as worth- 
less, when he was arrested by a loud grating or almost 
chirping noise, as of many creatures in concert; and 
on looking closer for the mysterious cause, he detected 
a specimen of Acalles, from which it was quite evident 
that a portion of the noise proceeded. On shaking 
the hollow stem so as to arouse its inmates, and put- 
ting his ear alongside it, the whole plant appeared 
musical, as though enchanted ; and it was evident to 
him, therefore, that there were more of the perfornjers 
within — a conjectm-e which proved to be correct ; for 
on breaking open the branches he captured nearly a 
dozen of them.” 
Mr. Wollaston kept three of these alive for several 
weeks, and as long as they lived it was a constant source 
of amusement to him to make these creatures stridulate 
or “sing.” It was long before he ascertained how the 
noise was produced, as they would often stridulate 
when lying on their sides, with their limbs closely 
retracted and their head applied to their chest. At 
length he perceived a minute and rapid vibration of 
the apical segment of the abdomen, so rapid that to 
the unassisted vision it was scarcely appreciable. He 
dissected specimens of the Acalles argillosus and the 
Acalles neptunus, and found in this part the structure 
by which the insects produce the sound. 
Section I.— ORTHOCERATA. 
With all the joints of the antennae more or less 
similar. 
Family— BRUCHIDAl. 
The family Bkuciud^ contains many small insects, 
which live in the seeds of leguminous plants ; and 
when they abound, as they sometimes do, very great 
is the extent of their depredations. The body of the 
perfect insect is oval and convex ; the head is bent 
* Annals and Mag. of Nat. Hist., 3rd ser., vol. vi. p. 14; 
July, 1860. 
downwards, so that the wide beak rests on the breast 
when the insect is not engaged in eating ; the antennai 
are not very long, and are serrated on the inside ; the 
elytra do not cover the abdomen ; the femora of the 
hind legs are very thick, and are often toothed on the 
under side. One species attacks the coffee, and, like 
most of the tribe, is named after the plant on which it is 
found. The Bruclms pisi, the insect figured (117), is 
Fig. 117. Fig. 118. 
Bnichus pisi. 
more common in the United States than it is here. It 
is called there, according to Melsheimer, the Pea-fly 
(Cat., p. 12). The figures above (118) show two 
peas and a bean attacked by Bnichus ; the larva 
represented much magnified. We borrow Dr. Harris’ 
account of its ravages on the pea: — “Few persons while 
indulging in the luxury of early green pease are aware 
how many insects they unconsciously swallow. When 
the pods are carefully examined, small discoloured spots 
may be seen upon them, each one corresponding to a 
similar spot on the opposite pea. If this spot on the 
pea be opened, a minute whitish grub destitute of feet 
will be found therein. It is the weevil in its larva form, 
which lives upon the marrow of the pea, and arrives at 
its full size by the time that the pea becomes dry. This 
larva or grub then bores a round hole from the hollow 
of the pea quite to the hull, but leaves the latter, and 
generally the germ of the future sprout, untouched. 
Hence these peas will frequently sprout and grow 
when planted. The grub is changed to a pupa within 
its hole in the pea in the autumn, and before the spring 
casts its skin again, becomes a beetle, and gnaws a hole 
through the thin bull in order to make its escape into 
the air, which frequently does not happen before the 
peas are planted for an early crop. After the peas 
have flowered, and while the pods are young and ten- 
der, and the peas within them are just beginning to 
swell, the beetles gather upon them and deposit their 
tiny eggs singly in the punctures or wounds which they 
make upon the surface of the pods. This is done 
mostly during the night or in cloudy weather. The 
grubs, as soon as they are hatched, penetrate the pod 
and bury themselves in the opposite peas; and the 
boles through which they pass into the seeds are so 
