5S THIRD ANNUAL REPORT OF 



This insect is more active at night than during the day, and is 

 often jarred down upon the sheet or the Curculio-catcher, for it falls 

 about as readily as the Plum Curculio. 



The destructive pear blight, otherwise known as fire-blight, has 

 been attributed to a peculiar poisonous fluid which this beetle se- 

 cretes and with which it poisons the wood.* I have never noticed 

 any such secretion, and feel quite convinced that it has nothing to 

 do with the real pear blight (and there are more than one kind) 

 which is very justly considered by the most eminent horticulturists 

 of the land to be of fungoid rather than insect origin. It is quite 

 probable that the beetle secretes some such fluid which causes a sort 

 of blight, because several bark-boring and wood-boring beetles are 

 known to produce such an effect; but this insect-blight must not be 

 confounded with the far more subtle and destructive Pear Blight, so 

 called. 



THE IMBRICATED SNOUT-BEETLE— Epiccerus imhicatus, Say. 



This is another insect, which is quite frequently met with on our 

 different fruit trees, doing considerable injury to apple and cherry 

 trees and gooseberry bushes, by gnawing the twigs and fruit. Its 

 natural history is, however, a sealed book, and I introduce it at pres- 

 ent more to draw the attention of orchard - 

 ists to this fact than to give any informa- 

 .tion with regard to it. The beetle is a 

 native of the more Western States and is 

 found much more commonly in the wes- 

 tern part of the State, in Iowa, Kansas, and 

 towards the mountains than it is on the 

 eastern side of the great Father of Waters. 



The general color is a dull silvery-white with brown markings as 

 in the figure (Fig. 21), which are sometimes dark and distinct, and at 

 others almost obsolete. Indeed the species is so variable that 

 it has received no less than four distinct names, i. e. four distinct spe- 

 cies have been fabricated out of one. f 



*See a communication from II. II. Babcock, of Chicago, in the Am. Entomologist and Botanist, 

 Vol. n, p. 176. 



fThere can bo no doubt of this, for the range of variation is so great that specimens agreeing 

 in every respect with imbricatus, fornudolosus, vadosus and fallax, are to be met with in very limi- 

 ted localities ; and both Dr. LeConte and Mr. Walsh were of opinion that these four so-called 

 species were but varieties. 



