342 NATURAL HISTORY. OF ARTHROPODS. 



makes punctures with her proboscis, which, as in most weevils, is functionally an 

 ovipositor, just beneath the skin of the fruit, and deposits an egg in each puncture. 

 When the female has thus oviposited, she makes a crescent-formed cut in the surface 

 of the fruit about the egg, so that the egg itself remains in a sort of flap. The foot- 

 less, fleshy, white larvae, which hatch from the white eggs in from four to eight days, 

 bore into the fruit, where they eat the fleshy portion just around the stone. The 

 larval state lasts from three to five weeks. The disturbance made by the larva gener- 

 ally causes stone-fruit to fall to the ground; there the larva, as soon as full-grown, 

 deserts the fruit in order to pupate a few inches beneath the surface of the ground. 

 The full-grown larva is about 0.4 of an inch in length, yellowish-white with a light 

 brown head, and is legless. Pupation lasts about three weeks, when the beetles 

 emerge, hibernating later beneath leaves, under bark, and in other secluded nooks. 

 This weevil is said by Dr. C. V. Riley to attack the fruit of " the nectarine, plum, 

 apricot, peach, cherry, apple, pear, and quince, preferring them in the order of their 

 namino-." The remedies that thus far seem best in order to lessen the numbers of the 



c3 



plum-weevil are to destroy the fruit that has fallen to the ground, and to capture the 

 beetles by jarring the trees. Of course an application of the first remedy will 

 not give any visible result the first year, because only larra will be destroyed, but 

 the beetles will be less numerous succeeding years, and if all fruit-culturists would 

 unite in thus destroying these weevil-larva? in the fruit, their injuries would rapidly 

 decrease. Fallen fruit, containing these and other larvas, can be gathered, carted 

 from the orchards, and destroyed ; but often a much more convenient and profitable 

 way is to let hogs into the orchards, where they can eat the fruit promptly as it drops 

 from the trees. The capture of the beetles by jarring them from the trees depends 

 upon the habit which nearly all weevils, in common with many other insects, have of 

 dropping to the ground when suddenly disturbed. Dr. Hull, an Illinois fruit-grower, 

 has contrived an apparatus for capturing the weevils by jarring. This apparatus is, 

 essentially, a large white umbrella inverted over a wheelbarrow. Into that side of the 

 umbrella which is directly opposite the person pushing the barrow a slot extends 

 nearly to the middle, where, upon the front end of the wheelbarrow, a pad is fastened 

 to prevent bruising the trees. The wheelbarrow is pushed suddenly against the trunk 

 of each tree, the slot admitting the trunk, and allowing the umbrella to pass beneath 

 the tree, and the jar which the tree receives from the padded barrow shakes the 

 weevils into the inverted umbrella below. 



Passing now from a species especially noteworthy for the agriculturist, the next 

 species to be considered, Cionus scrophularice, attacks plants of little value to man, 

 but is interesting to naturalists on account of its peculiar mode of life. The beetle 

 itself, which is common in Europe, and has been taken in America, is nearly globular 

 in form, and about 0.15 of an inch long. Its elytra are dark gray, spotted with black 

 and white, its prothorax yellowish-white ; beneath, the abdomen is black, the legs and 

 anterior portions gray ; on the elytra! suture, a little in front of the middle, is a black 

 spot. The species commonly inhabits Scrophularia nodosa, although often feeding 

 on other plants. Its larva feeds exposed upon the leaves of the plant, and covers 

 itself with a sticky secretion which is discharged from a wart upon the basis of the 

 twelfth segment, and which enables it to adhere to the leaves. When ready for pupa- 

 tion, the larva spins a parchment-like cocoon with its secretion. This cocoon is won- 

 derfully similar to the seed-capsules of the Scrophularia, and is generally attached to 

 pedicels of these seed-pods. This is a most striking case where a cocoon mimics, for 



