THE PALES WEEVIL. 
71 
probably other kinds of pines, doing sometimes immense 
injury to them. Wilson, the ornithologist, describes the 
depredations of these insects, in his account* of the ivory¬ 
billed woodpecker, in the following words: “Would it be 
believed that the larvae of an insect, or fly, no larger than 
a grain of rice, should silently, and in one season, destroy 
some thousand acres of pine-trees, many of them from two 
to three feet in diameter and a hundred and fifty feet 
high I Yet whoever passes along the high road from George¬ 
town to Charleston, in South Carolina, about twenty miles 
from the former place, can have striking and melancholy 
proofs of the fact. In some places the whole woods, as far 
as you can see around you, are dead, stripped of the bark, 
their wintry-looking arms and bare trunks bleaching in the 
sun, and tumbling in mins before every blast, presenting a 
frightfrd picture of desolation. Until some effectual prevent¬ 
ive or more complete remedy can be devised against these 
insects, and their larvae, I would humbly suggest the pro¬ 
priety of protecting, and receiving with proper feelings of 
gratitude, the services of this and the whole tribe of wood¬ 
peckers, letting the odium of guilt fall to its proper owners.” 
Some years ago Mr. Nuttall kindly procured for me, near 
the place above mentioned, specimens of the destructive in¬ 
sects referred to by Wilson. They were of three kinds. 
Those in greatest abundance were the Pales weevil. One 
of the others was a larger, darker-colored weevil, without 
white spots on it, and named Hylohius picivorus by Ger- 
mar and Schonherr, or the pitch-eating weevil; it is sel¬ 
dom found in Massachusetts. The third was the white-pine 
weevil, to be next described. It is said that these beetles 
puncture the buds and the tender bark of the small branches, 
and feed upon the juice, and that the young shoots are often 
so much injured by them as to die and break off at the 
wounded part. But it is in the larva state that they are 
found to be most hurtful to the pines. The larvae live under 
* American Ornithology, Vol. IV. p. 21. 
