60 FIRST ANNUAL REPORT OP 



dent that it will avail but little for one person to destroy all his Cur- 

 culio while his neighbors are breeding them by thousands, so that 

 they can fly in upon him another year. They would also be of but 

 little service in the case of the cherry, as it remains on the tree when 

 stung. Poultry will be found valuable in an orchard as they also de- 

 vour I he grubs which fall with the fruit. 



Artificial Remedies. — Of the hundreds of patent nostrums, and 

 of the dozens of washes and solutions that have been recommended 

 as Curculio preventives or destroyers, there is scarcely one which is 

 worth the time required to speak of it. Air-slacked lime thrown on 

 the trees after the fruit is formed, is effectual in a certain measure, for 

 though it does not deter the female from depositing her eggs, yet so 

 long as the weather is wet, its caustic properties seem to be imparted 

 to the water and enter the cavity and destroy the egg. But it has no 

 good effect in dry weather. An article went the rounds of the papers 

 last Summer, to the effect that Mr. P. E. Rust, of Covington, Ky., had 

 tried burning tobacco stems with perfect success ! But a letter of in- 

 quiry which I addressed to that gentleman was never answered, al- 

 though it contained the requisite 3-cent postage stamp, and the tobac- 

 co remedy may be placed by the side of the Gas-tar and Coal-tar 

 remedies, which have proved utterly useless. After all, as Dr. Hull, 

 suggests, the successes, so reported, of these remedies, take their ori- 

 gin from insufficient experiment, by persons who are little aware of 

 the casualties to which the Curculio is subject, and who, if they hap- 

 pen to get fruit after applying some particular mixture, immediately 

 jump to the conclusion that it was on account of such mixture. 



It may therefore be laid down as a maxim, that the only effectual 

 and scientific mode of fighting the Curculio, aside from that of picking 

 up the fallen fruit, is by taking advantage of its peculiar instinct 

 which on approach of danger prompts it to fall; or in other words to 

 catch it by jarring the tree. The most effectual method of doing this 

 on a large scale is by means of Dr. Hull's "Curculio catcher," and I 

 give a description of it in the Doctor's own words : 



"To make a curculio catcher we first obtain a light wheel, not to 

 exceed three feet in diameter, the axletree of which should be about 

 ten inches long. We next construct a pair of handles, similar to those 

 of a wheelbarrow, but much more depressed at the point designed to 

 receive the bearings of the axletree, and extending forward of the 

 wheel just far enough to admit a crossbeam to connect the handles at 

 this point ; one-and-a-half inches in the rear of the wheel a second cross 

 beam is framed into the handles, and eighteen to twenty-four inches 

 further back, a third. The two last named cross-beams have framed to 

 their under-sides a fourth piece, centrally, between the handles, and 

 pointing in the direction of the wheel. To the handles and to the 

 three last named pieces, the arms or ribs to support the canvass are to 

 be fastened. To the front part of the beam connecting the handles in 

 front of the wheel, the ram is attached, this should be covered with 



