112 TRANSACTIONS OF THE ILLINOIS 



perfected in the fruit, it cuts quite a large hole for its escape, and these 

 holes are sufficiently characteristic to enable one who has paid attention 

 to the matter to tell with tolerable certainty whether an apple has been 

 infested with Apple-worm, Plum Curculio, or Apple Curculio — even 

 after the depredator has left. 



In the southern portion of Illinois and in some parts of Missouri this 

 insect is very abundant and does much damage to the apple crop; it 

 occurs in greater or less numbers in most states of the Union, but in 

 other localities again its work is scarcely ever seen, and I am satisfied 

 that the damage it does has been much oveiTated. We can only judge 

 of the future by the past, and though we may expect this insect to 

 increase somewhat with the increase of our orchards, it is folly to sup- 

 pose that it can go on increasing in geometrical ratio; and the pretty 

 mathematical calculations which are intended to alarm the cultivator at 

 the gloomy prospects of the future, are never made by those who under- 

 stand the complicated net-work in which every animal organism is 

 entangled, or who rightly understand the numerous influences at work 

 to keep each species within due bounds. Such figures look well on 

 paper, but, like air-castles, there is nothing real about them. 



Our apples suffer much more, in many localities, from the gougings. 

 of the perfect beetle and the burro wings of the larva of the Plum Cur- 

 culio, than they do from the work of this Apple-Curculio ; and this was 

 so much the case in my own locality the past summer, that I found a 

 dozen larvte of the former in apples, where I found one of the latter. 



[At the meeting of the Society, Mr. E. Daggy of Tuscola, Ills., had 

 on exhibition some pears that were very much deformed and gnarled. 

 After the reading of this paper he informed me that this injury had been 

 caused by the Apple Curculio, which he recognized from my figure and 

 from the specimens in the lecturing box. Upon examining the pears I 

 found a little dark circular spot which indicated distinctly where the snout 

 of the beetle had been inserted. This spot was the centre of a hard and 

 irregular but generally rounded knot or swelling which was sunk in a 

 depression of the softer parts of the pear, thus indicating that the growth, 

 by some property of the puncture, was checked and hardened, while the 

 other parts went on growing and swelling. Some of the fruit was so 

 badly disfigured that it could no longer be recognized, and Mr. Daggy 

 informed me that his Vicar of Winkfield, and " Sugar Pear " were 

 most affected in this way, and tliat his Duchesse pears were unblem- 

 ished]. 



THE SEASON OF THE YEAR DURING WHICH IT WORKS. 



The beetles come from their winter quarters and begin to work on 

 the fruit at about the same time as does the Plum Curculio — if anything 

 a little later. They have generally got fully to work, and larvas may be 

 found already hatched, by the first of June, and tliey may be found in 

 the fruit in one stage or another all along tlirough the months of June and 

 July and the greater part of August. 



