Weevil, a name applied indiscriminately to insects of the moth, fly, and beetle orders, numbering thousands of species. The term is more properly restricted to the larvae of the tetramerous beetles of the tribe rliynchophora, in which the front of the head is prolonged into a snout, at the end of which the mouth is placed. These insects are diurnal, slow, timid, and defenceless, and the larvas are soft, white, and footless, with hard heads, very convex rings, and strong horny jaws; they live usually in the interior of the stem, fruit, or seeds of plants, to which they are very injurious. The grain weevil of Europe (calandra [sitophilus] granaria, Linn.) is one of the most mischievous; it is a slender, red beetle, about an eighth of an inch long; the eggs are deposited in the wheat after it is stored, and the grubs as soon as hatched burrow, in, each occupying a single grain and eating it so as to leave only the husks in a large heap; the destruction is usually not discovered 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 balaninus nucum (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 hazelnut Say gave the name of nasicus; it is 3/10 of an inch long, dark brown with rusty yellow hairs. - The pea weevil (bruchus pisi, 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 larva) at once penetrate; they are said not to touch the germ of the pea, though all the rest is devoured. Peas in the winter often contain these larvae, but not when a year old; they are killed by soaking in hot water a minute or two just before planting; the crow blackbird and Baltimore oriole devour great numbers of them.

This species -probably originated 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 1½ in. long and black; the larvae 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 larvae of another species (C. sacchari, C. air v.), equally destructive to the sugar cane, these are eaten by the natives of the West Indies 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 [hylobius] 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 destroyed by these insects; the best way to prevent their ravages is to protect the woodpeckers, 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 larvae are destroyed by woodpeckers and ichneumon flies. Other destructive species are found on European pines. The plum weevil is described under Cukculio. (See Kollar's and Harris's works on insects injurious to vegetation).

Pea Weevil (Bruchus pisi).