74 
COLEOl’TERA. 
There are some of the long-snouted weevils which inhabit 
nuts of various kinds. Hence they are called nut-weevils, 
and belong chiefly to the modern genus Balaninus , a name 
that signifies living or being in a nut. The common nut- 
weevil of Europe lays her eggs in the hazelnut and filbert, 
having previously bored a hole for that purpose with her 
long and slender snout, while the fruit is young and tender, 
and dropping only one egg in each nut thus pricked. A 
little grub is soon hatched from the egg, and begins immedi- 
ately to devour the soft kernel. Notwithstanding this, the 
nut continues to increase in size, and, by the time that it is 
ripe and ready to fall, its little inhabitant also comes to its 
growth, gnaws a round hole in the shell, through which it 
afterwards makes! its escape, and burrows in the ground. 
Here it remains unchanged through the winter, and in the 
following summer, having completed its transformations, it 
comes out of the ground a beetle. 
In this country weevil-grubs are very common in hazel- 
nuts, chestnuts, and acorns ; but I have not hitherto been 
able to rear any of them to the beetle 
state. The most common of the nut-wee- 
vils known to me appears to be the lihyn- 
chcenus ( Balaninus ) nasicus of Say (Fig. 
38), the long-snouted nut-weevil. Its form 
is oval, and its ground color dark brown ; 
but it is clothed with very short rust-yellow 
flattened hairs, which more or less conceal 
its original color, and are disposed in spots 
on its wing-covers. The snout is brown 
and polished, longer than the whole body, as slender as a 
bristle, of equal thickness from one to the other, and slightly 
curved ; it bears the long elbowed antennas, which are as 
fine as a hair, just behind the middle. This beetle measures 
nearly three tenths of an inch in length, exclusive of the 
snout. Specimens have been found paired upon the hazel- 
nut-tree in July, at which time probably the eggs are laid. 
Fig. 38. 
