Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume XVI.djvu/556

 536 WEEVIL WEIGELA ing it BO as to leave only the husks in a large heap; the destruction is usually not discov- ered until it is too late to remedy it. Indian corn and rice are attacked by similar species of the genus. Drying the grain in kilns seems to be the only method of destroying these insects. The liilititinn* nucutn (Germ.) is the parent of the nut weevils, the little white grubs so often seen in filberts and other nuts in Europe. The female by her long proboscis makes a small hole in the young nut when it is soft, and therein deposits an egg, the grub eating its way to the interior and there living to maturity ; it then gnaws its way out, falls to the ground, burrows, and undergoes its change to a pupa at the beginning of the next summer. To the species of our hozelnut Say gave the name of nasicu* ; it is VV f lin inc ^ 1 l D t dark brown with rusty yellow hairs. The pea wee- vil (hruc/utx jii*i, Linn.), or pea bug, is about a tenth of an inch long, rusty black with a white spot on the hind part of the thorax and white dots on the wings. The perfect insect is found in the flowers ; the eggs are laid in the young pods of peas and beans just opposite the seeds, into which the larvm at once penetrate; they are said not to touch though all the rest is .*^ devoured. Peas in the /C winter often contain X^X these larvro, but not when a year old ; they Pea Weevil (Bruchu. ptal). ? r6. kille< * ^ 8O * kin 6 in hot water a minute or two just before planting ; the crow black- bird and Baltimore oriole devour great num- bers of them. This species probably origi- nated in America, in the northern parts of which it is common, whence it has spread to central Europe. Lentils and other leguminous plants are attacked by other species. The palm weevil or worm (calandra palmarum, Clairv.) is about 1} ' long and black; the larva) are between 2 and 3 in. long, and live in the pith of the palm, especially the cabbage palm, making a cocoon of the surrounding fibres; they are dirty yellow with a black head, looking like moving pieces of fat, and are esteemed as delicacies in the West Indies. With the larva) of another species (C. saechari, Clairv.), equally destructive to the sugar cane, these are eaten by the natives of the West In- dies and Guiana, boiled, roasted, or broiled on wooden spits, with dried and powdered bread. There are many weevils attacking resinous trees, among which one of the most destructive is the pine weevil (curculio [hylobiu] pales, Herbst), a quarter to a third of an inch long, deep chestnut brown with a few yellowish white dots and lines. Thousands of acres of pines in the southern states have been de- stroyed by these insects; the best way to pre- vent their ravages is to protect the woodpeck- ers, their natural enemies. The rhynchcenus strobi (Peck) is about a quarter of an inch long, brown with many rusty white scales; they devour the leading shoot of the white pine, whose growth produces the lofty and straight trunk of this beautiful tree ; the larvaa are destroyed by woodpeckers and ichneumon flies. Other destructive species are found on European pines. The plum weevil is described under CUBCCLIO. (See Kollar's and Harris's works on insects injurious to vegetation.) WEGEFAETH, an unorganized N. W. county of Texas, in the "panhandle;" area, 8,600 sq. m. It is drained by the forks of Red river. The W. part is hilly ; the rest consists of un- dulating prairies. WEIGELA, a shrub introduced from China by Robert Fortune, named Weigela rqsea by Thunberg, after Weigel, a German botanist. It is not sufficiently distinct from a much older genus, Dienilla, after a French surgeon named Rose Weigela (Diervllla rosca). Dierville, who early in the last century carried the plant to Tournefort from Canada. Being the older, Diercilla must be taken as the cor- rect botanical name of these shrubs, butweige- la, being so thoroughly established, must serve as the common name. Diervilla differs from the honeysuckle (Lonicera) in its slender calyx lobes, its nearly regular corolla, and the fruit, which in the honeysuckle is a berry, but in this is a many-seeded, two-valved pod. We have two native forms, popularly known as bush honeysuckle. The northern species, D. trifida, is quite common in the middle and northern states, extending to Hudson bay, and westward to the Rocky mountains ; it is a neat bush, 1 to 4 ft. high, with oblong-ovate, taper-pointed, petioled leaves, and pale yellow flowers, usually three on a stalk, from the axils of the upper leaves and terminal. The southern bush hon- eysuckle, D. sessilifolia, found along the south- ern Alleghanies, has sessile leaves and many flowers upon a stalk. These are far less showy than those from Japan and China. The no-
 * tho germ of the pea,