2G8 TRANSACTIONS OF THE ILLINOIS 



To dislodge the cureulio, it is the belief of some persons that severe pounding and 

 jarring of the trees is necessary to bring these insects to the ground, while just the 

 reverse of this is the case, as auy one may learn by approaching the tree cautiously, 

 and with the thumb and finger snap the base of the limb on which a female cureulio is 

 at her work ; at the first jar the insect seems to become aware of danger ; she immedi- 

 ately starts up, and by the time the second or third is felt, she will have loosened her 

 hold and depressed her snout upon her body, folded her legs and antennae, and dropped 

 to the ground. Violent shaking of the trees generally fails to frighten them, while any 

 decided jarring motion, quickly imparted to the tree, is all that is required to briug 

 them down. 



Various modes for destroying these insects annually appear in print; ninety nine out 

 of each hundred are worth less than the paper on which they are printed. 



Nearly all the successes so reported are evidently made by persons who, having in 

 preceding years lost their fruit by being stung by this insect, set about trying some 

 experiment to head off the cureulio, and are surprised to find their fruit escape injury. 

 They at once jump to the conclusion that they have hit upon the infallible remedy and 

 without loss of time, herald it to the world. If persons experimenting were fully 

 acquainted with its habits, and the many casualties this insect is subjected to, they 

 would then see how premature it would be to give the result of a single season's expe- 

 rience as conclusive of success. 



Three only of the remedies that have been proposed will receive any notice from us. 

 A few years since, the lime remedy was quite generally received as a sure protection to 

 the plum. At the time of its appearance in print, we were operating with our cureu- 

 lio catcher and at once discontinued its use on several of our trees, and made a most 

 thorough trial of the lime, which at first promised to be a bucccss. It did not seem to 

 deter the cureulio from depositing its eggs in the plums, but they did not hatch ; later, 

 the weather becoming dry, the succeeding deposits did hatch, and the larvae pene- 

 trated the plums as freely as in those not limed. 



Further experiments with the lime proved that so long as the weather was wet, the 

 lime or the caustic properties of the lime, was imparted to the water and entered the 

 perforation in which the eggs were deposited and destroyed them, but was of no value 

 in dry weather. 



The second remedy, we shall consider, that of pasturing the orchard with hogs, is valu- 

 able to some extent, since all the fallen fruit with the larva they contain are consumed 

 by them. In isolated orchards this would be sufficient protection Avere it not for the fact 

 that larva? are often perfected in the fruit, and eat their way out, while the fruit is yet 

 upon the tree. To our certain knowledge, this invariably occurs to an extent to stock 

 the orchard with curculios the following year. 



We now come to the third and only certain remedy yet known, of jarring down and 

 destroying the insects during the entire cureulio season. And since ours is the only 

 practical mode of capturing the insects expeditiously, yet published, we append to this 

 paper a description of our cureulio catcher, and the manner of operating with it. 



To make a cureulio catcher, we first obtain a light wheel, not to exceed three feet in 

 drameter, the axletree of which should be about ten inches long. We next construct a 

 pair of handles, similar to those of a wheel-barrow, but much more depressed at the 

 point designed to receive the bearings of the axletree, and extending forward of the 

 wheel, just far enough to admit a cross beam to connect the handles at this point, one 



