ENTOMOLOGY. 401 



The native plum crop, having proved a total failure, we cannot report 

 very definitely on the plum curculio. We know that they were present in 

 considerable numbers at the time the trees were in bloom and the fruit 

 forming, and we do not thinlc that any fruit remained upon the trees long 

 enough to allow the eggs to hatch and feed the young grub to maturity. 

 It is to be hoped that they have not found some to us unknown means for 

 securing a subsistence and perpetuating their kind — a blessing that would 

 reward us well for the loss of one crop of this very valuable fruit. In 

 some orchards, we find the apple curculio, orgouger, got in his usual work, 

 and some extra. In our observations, we have found them much the 

 worst in old, uncultivated and neglected orchards, and increasing with 

 a rapidity that should create alarm and call for vigorous efforts to head 

 them off. The surest remedy against them appears to be making a hog 

 pasture of the orchard at certain seasons of the year. They have appeared 

 first in the timbered portions of the state where the wild thorn apple is 

 more cr less abundant. The domestic apple furnishes them a more con- 

 genial food, to which they get accustomed quickly, and on which they 

 multiply rapidly. Spraying, thus far, has not given satisfactory results. 

 Jarring the trees and catching the beetle is a tedious process, but the best 

 that I know of, besides the hog remedy. Last fall, we visited an orchard 

 in Fillmore county, whicli was carrying a crop of over two thousand bush- 

 els, and in a careful search of lialf an hour could find but two specimens of 

 fruit that showed any marks of the work of the gouger. In another 

 orchard but a few miles distant, that has in years past been noted for its 

 fine fruit, more than three-fourths of the fruit showed the marks of 

 having been stung, and one-half of it was unmerchantable. In the first 

 orchard, pigs are pastured until the fruit is ripe enough to use, and after 

 the fruit is all gathered, a drove of hogs are turned in and fattened by 

 feeding them unhusked corn scattered from a wagon, driven between the 

 rows; the other is seeded down to grass. One is the most profitable 

 orchard in the state, the other will not much longer pay the expense of 

 harvesting the fruit, unless the curculio is headed off. 



The canker worm and the dent caterpillar did not make their presence 

 conspicuous. For many years, I have not seen fewer of the May beetle or 

 June bug, but, still, there were enough of them to make it unsafe to set a 

 strawberry bed for two years to come on ground that last June was carry- 

 ing a good crop of grass and weeds. The currant worm appeared at about 

 the usual season in about the usual numbers, and heavy rains washed off 

 the white hellibore soon after it was dusted on; but they left us some fruit, 

 and have not injured the bushes as seriously as last year. The potato 

 beetle was very scarce, very much more so than in 1891. On our own 

 place there were virtually none, and our friends Mr. Rosebreasted Groes- 

 beak and his wife changed their residence to a neighboring farm, where 

 they could get supplies for their family at less trouble and expense. 



We have never known the common house fly to be so scarce as in 1892. 

 Of some kinds of insects, the late crop turned out better. That was the 

 case with the European cabbage caterpillar. Few of the butterflies 

 were around in the early part of the season, but in July and August they 

 were more plentiful than usual and did great damage to late cabbage 

 and cauliflower. In certain districts the common grasshoppers were 

 numerous enough late in the summer to do considerable damage to young 

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