THE STATE ENTOMOLOGIST. 33 



THE AMOUNT OF DAMAGE IT DOES. 



The observations that I have been able to make on this insect's 

 work in our cultivated orchards are limited, but I think that it attacks 

 with equal relish both summer and winter apples. Whenever a beetle 

 has perfected in the fruit, it cuts quite a large hole for its escape, and 

 these holes are sufficiently characteristic to enable one who has paid 

 attention to the matter to tell with tolerable certainty whether an 

 apple has been infested with Apple- worm, Plum Curculio, or Apple 

 Curculio — even after the depredator has left. 



In the southern portion of Illinois and in some parts of Missouri 

 this insect is very abundant and does much damage to the apple crop ; 

 it occurs in greater or less numbers in most States of the Union, but 

 in other localities again its work is scarcely ever seen, and I am satis- 

 fied that the damage it does has been much overrated. We can only 

 judge of the future by the past, and though we may expect this insect 

 to increase somewhat with the increase of our orchards, it is folly to 

 suppose that it can go on increasing in geometrical ratio ; and the pretty 

 mathematical calculations which are intended to alarm the cultivator 

 at the gloomy prospects of the future, are never made by those who 

 understand the complicated net-work in which every animal organism 

 is entangled, or who rightly understand tihe numerous influences at 

 work to keep each species within due bounds. Such figures look well 

 on paper, but, like air-castles, there is nothing real about them. 



Our apples suffer much more, in many localities, from the goug- 

 ings of the perfect beetle and the burrowings of the larva of the Plum 

 Curculio, than they do from the work of this Apple Curculio ; and 

 this was so much the case in my own locality the past summer, that 

 I found a dozen larvee of the former in apples, where I found one of 

 the latter. 



At the late meeting of the Illinois State Horticultural Society, 

 Mr. E. Daggy, of Tuscola, Illinois, had on exhibition some pears that 

 were very much deformed and gnarled. This injury had been caused 

 by the Apple Curculio, which Mr. Daggy recognized from figures and 

 specimens which I had with me. Upon examining the pears I found 

 a little dark circular spot which indicated distinctly where the snout 

 of the beetle had been inserted. This spot was the center of a hard 

 and irregular but generally rounded knot or swelling, which was sunk 

 in a depression of the softer parts of the pear, thus indicating that 

 the growth, by some property of the puncture, was checked and 

 hardened, while the other parts went on growing and swelling. Some 

 of the fruit was so badly disfigured that it could no longer be recog- 

 nized, and Mr. Daggy informed me that his Vicar of Winkfield, Berga- 

 mott and " Sugar" pears were most affected in this way, and that his 

 Duchesse pears were unblemished. 



While the fruit is growing these punctures, in almost every in 

 6tance, cause just such calloused spots and deformities as those des 

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