INDIANA HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 525 



forming this scaly covering over it. After this scale is formed it needs 

 sometliing active and strong to penetrate it and destroy the insect. 

 The young of this insect are born, not hatched, in the spring or early sum- 

 mer, and keep up their depredations through the summer. One reason 

 that tills is so much more destructive than anything else that we know 

 anything about, is because it propagates so rapidly. Somebody has figured 

 out that a single female will become the great-grandmother of more than 

 three billion during a season, providing that half of them are female and 

 uone are injured. And if you could see the branch that I am holding, 

 you would not wouder at its destructiveness. Now you may ask what 

 questions you wish. 



Question: In what season does the curculio work? 



Prof. Troop: He begins early in the summer, soon after the apples are 

 formed. 



Question: It looks like that specimen you showed us has been done 

 recently. 



Prof. Troop: No, that has been done some tijue; it was done during 

 the forepart of the season, early in the summer. 



Mr. Burton; Is there anything practicable to be done against the 

 curculio in the apple orchard? 



Prof. Troop: 1 do not know of anything more efficacious than spray- 

 ing and using plenty of Bordeaux mixture and Paris green. 



Question: Do you think cultivation makes any difference in regard to 

 the curculio? 



Pcof. Troop: It might make a difference in this way: It would break 

 up its hiding place by keeping the orchard cultivated. Where the orchard 

 is kept in grass the curculio goes into the ground and goes through its 

 changes; its transformation is in the ground, and it winters there. There- 

 fore, if the ground is kept stirred under the trees, it would break that up 

 to a great extent. 



Chaii-man Latta: To what extent does the apple curculio feed? 



I'iOf. Troop: It feeds just enough to make a knotty apple. Like the 

 plum curculio, all it does is to puncture the apple and lay its egg there. 

 That is all the harm it does, but that is harm enough. The apple cur- 

 culio rarely comes to maturity in the apple. 



Chairman Latta: How does treatment affect the larva, or does it 

 affect to any extent the parent? 



