476 
ANNUAL REPORT OF NEW-YORK 
HAZELNUT. LEAVES. 
Mr. Say described this species in the year' 1826, and it is pro¬ 
bably since that date that Prof. Bohemann’s name Rkois was 
published, which name moreover is inappropriate, as it indicates 
this insect to inhabit the sumach, whereas it is upon the hazelnut 
that it is uniformly met with. It is a common species, and sits 
upon the leaves in the posture of a dog, with its long fore legs 
braced outwards and elevating its head high above its body. Its 
larva probably subsists upon this shrub, but its habits are as yet 
unknown to us. 
AFFECTING THE FRUIT. 
209. Straigiit-beaked nut-weevil, Balaninus rectus, Say. (Coleoptera. 
Curculionidie.) 
A small yellowish drab-colored weevil with a long slender beak 
not thicker than a bristle and having the jaws placed at its tip 
with which it bores a hole into the nut when it is young and soft, 
and drops therein an egg which it crowds into the nut with its 
beak. A small white footless worm hatches from this egg, which 
feeds upon the meat of the nut and gnaws a small hole through 
its side, out of which when full grown it escapes and buries itself 
in the earth to pass its pupa state. 
We are not certain as to the species of weevils which produce 
the grubs in our American hazelnuts, walnuts and acorns. As 
the Straight-beaked weevil has a long slender beak similar to that 
of the species which breeds in the hazelnuts in Europe, and as 
I have met with numbers of this insect upon hazelnut bushes the 
latter part of June, there can be little doubt but it was there for 
the purpose of depositing its eggs in the young fruit. Dr. Harris 
records the Long-beaked nut-weevil No. 185, as occurring also upon 
hazelnut bushes, and it may be that both these insects infest this 
fruit. They are much like each other, differing chiefly in their 
beaks, which in the present species is but half the length of the 
body and usually straight nearly to its tip, where it is curved 
downwards, but in some individuals it is slightly curved through 
its whole length, and is of a pitchy black color tinged in its mid¬ 
dle with chestnut-brown. Its body is clothed with prostrate 
drab-yellowish hairs on a blackish rust-colored ground. These 
