PLUMS AND PLUM CULTURE IN MICHIGAN. 237 



generally occurred when the fruit was about one-half or two-thirds grown ; 

 leaving the trees not only shorn of the ability to perfect their fruit, hue at the 

 same time unable to ripen the wood growth already in progress. In such 

 cases there generally remained to the tree only sufficient vigor to enable it to 

 push forth a few feeble leaves from near the termini of the shoots, and such 

 trees, consequently, were overtaken by the subsequent winter in a feeble and 

 unripened condition, totally unfitting them to withstand its rigors. Trees, 

 when severely affected, were frequently killed outright by the succeeding win- 

 ter, seldom surviving the second. 



The cause of this apparent disease (which seems to have been of only a few 

 years duration), seems, at the time, to have eluded observation. At least, we 

 do not recollect to have noticed even an attempt to suggest either the cause, or 

 a remedy. Subsequent inquiry and research, however, have pretty well satis- 

 fied us that it is to be attributed to the depredations of a noted but infinites- 

 imal pest of our greenhouse and parlor plants, which, during the hot, dry 

 weather of late summer, doubtless found the out-of-door climate, and the foli- 

 age of the plum tree, favorable for his operations. The cultivators of exotics 

 will, doubtless, at once understand that we allude to the Eed Spidei-. This 

 being the cause, the remedy lies in the repeated syringing of the foliage (espe- 

 cially its under side), with weak soap-suds, soot water, or even clear warm 

 water, as soon as the enemy shall be discovered, and continuing the process 

 frequently till he is efi'ectually dislodged. 



THE CURCULIO. 



The only other insect enemy of either the plum tree or its fruit, whose 

 depredations have proved at all formidable, is that most persistent and trou- 

 blesome of all the enemies of the fruit grower, the Curculio. It is generally 

 said and believed that insects are guided in their operations purely by instinct,, 

 education being assumed to have no place in their system of tactics ; and yet 

 we find the "Little Turk," who must have spent long ages upon this mun- 

 dane sphere before he made the acquaintance of the ^^ Primus Domestica," all 

 at once turning his attention to this fruit, and adhering to it, judging from' 

 the persistency of his operations, with a pertinacity almost or quite without a 

 parallel, excepting, possibly, the more modern and equally notable case of the 

 beetle, so recently colonized upon us from the deserts of Colorado. 



The idea is advanced by some entomologists, that when, from the clearing 

 away of the native growths, or other similar cause, an insect finds itself de- 

 prived of the customary supply of food for its support, or that of its progeny, 

 it turns to some other and not unfrequently to a cultivated family or variety 

 of plants or fruit as a substitute; and we see much ground for the supposition 

 that the comparatively recent devotion of the curculio to the domestic plum 

 is to be accounted for in this manner. Our interest in the matter, however, 

 lies not so much in determining why the attack is made, as in devising an 

 easy and certain preventive, — the attempt to do which seems, so far, to have 

 resulted in but doubtful or partial success. 



CURCULIO REMEDIES. 



It has been frequently remarked, and apparently with more or less correct- 

 ness, that entomologists, heretofore, seem to have been more intent upon a cor- 

 rect scientific description of the insects that may have come under their ob- 

 servation, than upon such acquaintance with their habits, including the times, 

 places, and modes of taking food, depositing their eggs, and undergoing their 



