62 
same plant as they often do, might well be imagined by the uninitiated 
to be one species, or at most as sexes of the same form, but there is no 
doubt of their distinctness. C. scrophtlariae has the thorax entirely 
covered with yellow-white pubescence ; tuberculosus has the disc of 
the thorax bare, and the sides only clothed with darker yellowish 
scales. Sharing perhaps the same plant as these larger species, one 
may not infrequently discover a smaller snowy-white weevil, having 
velvety dark red markings, the chief of which are a large irregularly 
shaped blotch on the suture just below the scutellum, and near the 
apex of the suture, the same large circular spot which adorns the two 
other < ioiii. This is <blattariar. At a little distance this pretty 
species is curiously like a bird-dropping, and this likeness probably 
operates as a protection to it. 
The larva of < ’ionm, which, with the pupa, may, as I have already 
mentioned, be found on the plant with the perfect insect, is a slimy 
creature which might perhaps by the casual observer be put down as a 
tiny slug. AYhen the time arrives for the change to the next stage 
these larva? envelop themselves in a glutinous secretion, within which, 
when formed into a sort of ball and hardened by exposure to the air, 
the change takes place. These pupae may often be found congregated 
together on the leaves and flower-heads of the plants. 
Away on the marsh beyond the river there runs from north to 
south a line of dwarf, bushy willows, with here and there a hawthorn 
intermixed. Another hedge, running at right angles up from the 
river, joins the first about midway down its length. At the corner 
where the hedges meet, the ground becomes slightly depressed, broken 
up, and pitted with irregular holes, and hereabouts grow numbers of 
peculiar-looking plants whose sheathed stems and needle-pointed 
branches are entirely destitute of leaves. These “horse-tails” 
(botanieally the representatives of the genus Kiptmtum) have their 
especial beetle parasite, the weevil, (iri/j>i<iiits eijnisrti, which, ap¬ 
parently in Britain, is attached to this group of plants alone. It is 
a rather large insect, with the body somewhat square in outline, black 
above, with the apical portion and sides of the elytra clothed with 
whitish scales, while, just above this apical white area, and at the 
shoulders also, are two little white spots; the rostrum is long, curved, 
and slender, with the antenna? (which, as in the majority of weevils, 
are elbowed or bent into two parts) rising from towards the apex. The 
“horse-tails” affected by (rri/piilins, are, however, few and far between, 
as the insect is by no means common. "When sweeping for it along the 
side of the willow-hedge 1 have not infrequently found in the net 
another much smaller and very differently shaped weevil. This, 
known to science as Liinnabarn t-album, is cylindrical or barrel¬ 
shaped. I have been unable to trace it to any particular plant, but 
Mecinmja/raxter, an insect with much the facies of Liinnubarix, and which 
occasionally turns up elsewhere on the marsh, lives upon the plantains, 
which, and more especially Plantapo lan real a ta, are spread abundantly 
over the fields. 
I find it impossible to close this little sketch of our typical Lea 
Valley weevils without some reference to the first of that most 
interesting group of beetles 1 ever saw alive, namely, llan/notus 
nbxcimix. It was during the summer of 1894, at a time when the 
world of insects was to me a terra inior/nita, and I remember even 
