56 FIRST ANNUAL REPORT OF 



larva, pupa or beetle state, to be found among the sand in the vase on November 29th ; which was, 

 perhaps, due to the contents having kept much moister than those of the first vase, though on July 

 25th 1 had, as I thought, moistened the sand in the first vase quite sufficiently." 



Now because there was an intermission of 19 days when no Cur- 

 culios came out, Mr. Walsh arrives at once to the conclusion that 

 there are two distinct broods, the second of which is, " of course" gen- 

 erated by the first. If the infected plums had been collected and 

 placed in vases day by day, or if the curculios bred in the first exper- 

 iment had been furnished with fresh plums and had actually paired 

 and deposited again, the experiments would have been satisfactory ; 

 but as they stand, they seem to me, on the very face, to forbid the 

 conclusions to which the experimenter arrived. In both these ex- 

 periments the very result was obtained that might have been ex- 

 pected, for I have myself proved, that with favorable conditions the 

 Curculio remains under ground about 3 weeks, and as there would 

 naturally be none advanced beyond the full grown larva state, when 

 first put into the vase, perfect Curculios could not possibly appear 

 till they had had time to transform, or in other words, till about three 

 weeks after the plums were placed in the vase. Thus from the plurns 

 placed in the vase on the 24th of June the first Curculios appeared on 

 the 19th of July — 25 daj T s afterwards ; while from those placed in the 

 second vase on July 27th, the first Curculios appeared on the 23d of 

 August — 27 days afterwards. The interval also, of 19 days which 

 elapsed between the issuing of the last Curculios in the first experi- 

 ment and the first curculios in the last experiment, was exactly what 

 should have been expected, since the plums were placed in the sec- 

 ond vase eight days before the last curculios in the first vase had 

 issued. Had the plums been placed in the second vase 10 days earlier 

 or 10 days later, there would have been an intermission of 9 or 29 

 days accordingly, in their coming out, etc., etc. Moreover, a period 

 of at least 50 days elapses between the deposition of an egg and the 

 time required for that egg to develop into a Curculio and even on the 

 supposition that the female commenced depositing the moment she 

 left the ground, which is certainly not the case, the Curculios bred in 

 the second vase could not possibly have been the progeny of any that 

 appeared contemporaneously with those bred from the first vase. 



Natural Remedies. — There is no very good evidence that any true 

 parasites infest the Curculio, and though it was well known that ants 

 attacked and killed the larvae as they left the fruit to enter the 

 ground, yet until the present year no other cannibals were known to 

 attack it ; but Mr. Walsh in his interesting account of a trip through 

 Southern Illinois has shown that there are several cannibal insects 

 which habitually prey upon it. From this account which was pub- 

 lished in the American Entomologist — pp. 33-35 — I condense the fol- 

 lowing facts. 



