THE I’E A- WEEVIL. 
61 
cases, and are therefore unable to fly. They walk slowly, 
and being of a timid nature, and without the means of de- 
fence, when alarmed they turn back their antennae under 
the snout, fold up their legs, and fall from the plants on 
which they live. They make use of their snouts not only 
in feeding, but in boring holes, into which they afterwards 
drop their eggs. 
The young of these snout-beetles are mostly short fleshy 
grubs, of a whitish color, and without legs. The covering of 
their heads is a hard shell, and the rings of their bodies are 
very convex or hunched, by both of which characters they 
are easily distinguished from the maggots of flies. Their 
jaws are strong and horny, and with them they gnaw those 
parts of plants which serve for their food. It is in the grub 
state that weevils are most injurious to vegetation. Some 
of them bore into and spoil fruits, grain, and seeds ; some 
attack the leaves and stems of plants, causing them to swell 
and become cankered ; while others penetrate into the solid 
wood, interrupt the course of the sap, and occasion the 
branch above the seat of attack to wither and die. Most 
of these grubs are transformed within the vegetable sub- 
stances upon which they have lived ; some, however, when 
fully grown, go into the ground, where they are changed 
to pupae, and afterwards to beetles. 
In the spring of the year, we often find among seed- 
peas many that have holes in them ; and, if the peas have 
not been exposed to the light and air, we see a little in- 
sect peeping out of each of these holes, and waiting appar- 
ently for an opportunity to come forth and make its escape. 
If we turn out the creature from its cell, we perceive it to 
be a small oval beetle, rather more than one tenth of an 
inch long, of a rusty black color, with a white spot on the 
hinder part of the thorax, four or five white dots behind 
the middle of each wing-cover, and a white spot shaped like 
the letter T on the exposed extremity of the body. This 
little insect is the Bruchus Pisi of Linnaeus (Fig. 31), the 
