72 
CORN. 
place where it is not to be found ; but as when the corn is stored this 
small weevil is apt to be one of the worst pests of our granaries, it 
requires some mention. 
These small beetles are of the shape figured above at p. 71, rather 
more than the eighth of an inch in length, and furnished with a long 
snout, and they may readily be distinguished from the kind figured 
with them by being of a pitchy brown colour. The Rice Weevil as it 
is called (but which might be more conveniently known as the Spotted 
Granary Weevil) figured page 71, is usually distinguished by having 
four paler spots above. This kind is excessively injurious to imported 
grain of various kinds, but it does not as far as we know increase 
here, on account of the weather not being warm enough for its 
multiplication to any observable extent. 
Our regular Granary Weevil, so to distinguish the British unspotted 
kind, feeds in maggot-state in most kinds of corn, notably in Wheat 
and Barley, especially doing harm in malt, and also attacks Rye and 
Maize. The female beetle makes a hole with her proboscis or snout 
in a corn-grain, and lays an egg therein—one egg in each grain which 
she attacks. The maggot, which soon hatches, feeds on the flour of 
the grain and turns within it to chrysalis state, from which the weevil 
soon comes out. Increase is very rapid; it is considered “ that in 
the course of a week one female can lay up to as many as 150 eggs,”* 
and consequent destruction of grain is very great. To gain an idea of 
their powers I have placed a small heap of corn in a loft near an 
infested granary, and very shortly the weevils found it out and 
(though they are wingless) crept to the heap, and in a short time 
riddled a large proportion of it. It is supposed that the beetles feed 
on the flour of the grain to some extent, as well as the maggots, 
which often nearly clear the inside out, and amongst a number of this 
Calandra granaria which I have by me, in order to watch their habits, 
I find the beetles collected in parties in the outside skin of Maize 
grains. This points strongly to the Calandra feeding in beetle state, 
because one grain of Wheat or Rye is enough or more than enough for 
the nourishment of the one maggot which lives in it; therefore where 
the much larger Maize-grains are reduced to mere outer films, it 
appears there must have been the beetles as well as the one maggot at 
work to clear it. This matter is of some importance, in consideration 
of damage, as it explains why these beetles may be found in flour, 
which is not, as far as we know, used by them for egg deposit, or for 
rearing the young. 
In the course of last October I received samples of these weevils, 
with which some sacks of flour sent to a large public institution had 
* * Insekten kunde,’ by Dr. E. L. Taschenberg, pt. ii. p. 173. 
