REPORT OF THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 69 
deposited an egg in the cut; but Dr. F. C. Hill, of Ohio, states that the 
female first bores a round hole with her snout, not straight in, but slant- 
ing backward, so that the cavity is just below the skin ; she deposits 
her egg in the hole, and then cuts the usual crescent-shaped slit in front 
of it so as to undermine the egg, and leave it in a kind of flap formed 
by the little piece of flesh of the fruit which she has undermined, in 
order to meet the piece around the eg Be; aud prevent the growing fruit 
from crushing it. The insect in the perfect state is said by Dr. Riley to 
gouge holes in peaches and apples, and also to feed on bark, and tender 
twigs, and to gnaw holes in the leaves. In regard to the new remedy 
proposed this season by Mr. Ransom, of St. Joseph, Michigan, in the 
Prairie Farmer and elsewhere, | quote from Mr. Ransom himself: Some 
experiments were made by laying pieces of bark, &c., on the ground 
under the trees, as a shelter under which the cureulio could hide. The 
first night, about sunset, he prepared 250 trees, and in the morning 
went around, and in about three hours caught six hundred and forty- 
seven curculios; the next day, having finished the orchard of 400 trees, 
he killed four thousand one hundred and seventy-one curculios. The 
total number of curculios killed by him in one season was seventeen 
thousand nine hundred and forty-five. Now, the question arises, were 
these insects true plum-weevils? and might it not be that some other 
somewhat similar insects were counted in by mistake? The Michigan 
Farmer, iu commenting upon this article, says that the State entomo- 
logist of Illinois, and the horticultural editor of the Prairie Parmer, hav- 
ing been at St. Joseph, examining into the workings of the method pro- 
posed by Dr. Ransom to destroy the plum curculio, ‘stated that the traps 
were pieces of bark three or four inches long, and about half as wide. 
Before putting them down, the ground was smoothed and the earth 
pressed close to the trunks, so as to leave no hiding-place for the ecur- 
culio to enter. The pieces of bark were then laid close around the 
trunks of the trees, three or four pieces to a tree, and pressed down in 
contact with the earth, so that only very small openings should be left 
under them. The pieces laid close to the ground, with one edge touch- 
ing the tree, were generally selected by the insects, whose object was to 
shelter themselves, while at rest, from observation and possibly from 
the cold. On further inquiry, this method appears to have been only 
partially effective, and the fruit-growers near St. Joseph found that, 
though they destroyed many insects by this trappiug method, more 
were destroyed by jarring the trees. When the weather became warm, 
the curculios were taken under the trees in diminished numbers, while 
in fact their numbers were rapidly augmented in the trees. The con- 
elusions arrived at are briefly as follows: The trapping system will help 
to thin ont the curculio before the season for stinging the fruit com- 
mences; that it will not do to dispense with jarring the trees; and, fur- 
thermore, that pieces of bark for a short time, early in the season, when 
the days are sometimes warm and the nights cold, and betore the peach 
blossoms have withered away, are useful for capturing curculios, but 
that after the fruit is as large as a hazel-nut this remedy is not success- 
ful. It is elsewhere recommended to place the traps of bark under the 
trees as soon as the frost is fairly out of the ground. Mr. Riley states 
that this remedy was discovered several years 280, | and described by 
Mrs. H. Weir, of Johnsville, New York, in the Rural New Yorker, Janu- 
ary 28, 1865, ‘when 161 curculios were caught under some lumber be- 
fore the plum-trees were in flower.” I have devoted more space to this 
subject than was at first intended, as it has created some sensation 
among fruit-growers; and it might be well for our pomologists to ex- 
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