298 
Beetles 
at the base of young corn-plants, and at night bore little round holes into 
their stems. The larvae live in the stems of timothy, sedges, or bulb-rooted 
grasses, pupating in fall or early spring. To the genus Calandra belongs 
the destructive rice-weevil, C. oryzce, } inch long, blackish to pale chestnut, 
which attacks all kinds of stored grains and is especially injurious in the 
southern states to rice, and the granary-weevil, C. granaria , J inch long, 
dark brown, also common in grain-bins. Both these species have been 
widely distributed by commerce, and by their rapid multiplication and the 
concealment afforded them by the grain often attain such abundance as 
to cause great loss in mills, breweries, 
and elevators. The preventive remedy 
is cleanliness and the rapid removal of 
the stored grain. They prefer dark 
places, therefore a flood of sunlight 
will prevent their rapid increase. In 
bins that can be made nearly air-tight 
these pests may be killed by the fumes 
of carbon bisulphide. 
One may often see in the woods the 
curious hieroglyphics of the engraver- 
beetles (Scoiytidae). Where bark has 
been torn from a tree - trunk both 
the exposed trunk-wood and the inner 
surface of the stripped-off bark reveal 
the tortuous branching mines or tunnels 
of the Scoiytidae. A common way of 
Fig. 407. — The quince-curculio, Com- makin § these tunnels is as follows: The 
trachelus cratagi. (After photograph beetles (a male and a female together) 
krged n ) gerland: natUral SiZe and en ’ burrow from the outside through the 
thick rough outer bark, usually leaving 
a little betraying splotch of fine sawdust, to the inner live bark or sap- 
wood; here the pair turn, keep to this live sap-filled region, laying their 
eggs in masses or scattered along a tunnel. Soon the larvae hatch, where¬ 
upon each digs a tunnel for itself, all of the new larval mines branching out 
from the original tunnel made by the parent beetles. When full-grown 
the larva digs a cell at the end of its tunnel and pupates in it. The issuing 
beetle finds its way out through the tunnels and is soon ready to begin a new 
mine. But there is much variation in the mining habits of the various species. 
The beetles are small, often microscopic, the larger ones rarely more than 
J inch long. They are brown to blackish, with stout, nearly cylindrical 
hard bodies, the hind end of the body usually obliquely or squarely truncate, 
and the head short, bent downward, and so covered by the thorax as to be 
