If left to run wild, the butternut curculios are a serious menace to the butternut, the Japanese walnut and the Persian walnut. Their life history as described at length in U.S.D.A. bulletin 1066, is briefly as follows: The beetles (called elephant bugs by some because the side view resembles the elephant) spend the winter in the ground. As soon as new growth appears on the host tree they begin feeding on the tender leaves and stems. Soon they begin laying their eggs in crescent shaped punctures which they cut in the new shoots and nutlets. The larvae hatch in a few days and tunnel through the pith of the shoots seriously injuring and stunting their growth while the infested nuts soon fall from the tree. The eggs may be laid from late May to early August. They hatch in a few days. The larvae complete their growth in four or five weeks when they enter the ground to pupate. In about a month they emerge as adult beetles and begin feeding on leaves and leaf stems as their parents did in the spring, but they will do no egg laying until the following spring. Poison spray applied in early spring and again in late August and September should so reduce their numbers that they will not become a serious pest. Our State Experiment Station suggests the use of a cryolite spray as it is more effective against curculios than arsenical sprays and less likely to injure tender walnut foliage. The Mitchell hybrid, (butternut x heartnut) with us, appears to have natural immunity to the curculio. This brings to mind a secondary but very important reason for finding better butternuts,--namely that they may be used as a starting point for the super variety that someone should give the world from his long rows of crosses between the best butternuts and the best heartnuts.