40 THIRD ANNUAL REPORT OF 



Huron Burt, of AVilliamsburg, Callaway county, Mo., with the states 

 ment that it was doing great damage to the plums in that locality, 

 though the little Turk was scarcely met with. There is a plum known 

 there as "Missouri Nonsuch" which, though said to be Curculio proof,, 

 is worked upon very badly by the Gouger. 



The Plum Gouger is often found on wild crab trees, and may, like 

 the Plum Curculio, occasionally deposit and breed in pip fruit; but 

 it is partial to smooth-skinned stone-fruit &uch as prunes, plums, and 

 nectarines, and it does not even seem to relish the rough skinned 

 peach. 



OFTEN MISTAKEN FOR THE PLUM CURCULIO. 



It has often been confounded with the Plum Curculio, and was 

 once supposed by my friend L. C. Francis, of Springfield, Ills., to be 

 the male of that species. We all have a right to suppose what we 

 please, and as long as our suppositions are not thrust on the public 

 for ascertained facts, they can do no possible harm. But Mr. J. P. 

 Williamson, of Des Moines county, Iowa, is not satisfied with suppos- 

 ing this or some other straight-snouted weevil, to be the female of the 

 Plum Curculio, but, in a last summer's issue of the Prairie Farmer > 

 not only emphatically speaks of it as such, but, finding that these 

 supposed females frequent the trees two weeks earlier than the males, 

 (?) he concludes for some unexplained reason, that the sole object of 

 visiting, the fruit iafor the deposition of eggs; and straightway hatches 

 the theory that the Plum Curculio can do no harm till the males ap- 

 pear! Consequently, instead of jarring our trees as long as fruit re- 

 mains on them, we are informed by Mr. Williamson that it is only 

 necessary to jar them about six weeks. 



And thus it always is with men who do not sufficiently understand 

 the absolute importance of care and caution in reading Nature's 

 secrets: from supposition to assumption ; from assumption to theory;, 

 from theory to advice, which — it is unnecessary here to say — is of a 

 most pernicious character. 



ITS TIME OF APPEARANCE. 



This beetle appears in the spring about the same time as the Plum 

 Curculio, but as no eggs are deposited after the stone of the fruit 

 becomes hard, and as its larva requires a longer period to mature 

 than that of the latter, its time of depositing is shorter, and the old 

 beetles generally die off and disappear before the new ones eat their 

 way out of the fruit, which they do during August, September, and 

 October, according to the latitude. 



ITS NATURAL HISTORY. 



Though we have no absolute proof of the fact, analogy would 

 lead us to believe, and in my own mind there is no doubt, that this 



