97 



CHAPTER XII.— The Plum Gouger. {Anthonomua prumcida, Walsh.) 



I have but little to add to what I stated respecting this insect in 

 the Practical Entomologist; (Vol. II. pp. 79-80); and I may say 

 likewise, that I have but very little to correct or modify in that ar- 

 ticle. 



These insects take wing quite readily, almost as readily indeed 

 as a Tiger-beetle {Cicindela) ; so that even in my office, where the 

 sun was not shining, on removing some of them out of a bottle, in or- 

 der to bring a lens to bear on them to watch their operations as they 

 were sitting on a plum, they would generally open their wing-cases 

 almost immediately, and fly ofi^ a short distance. In this respect they 

 differ very remarkably from the Plum Curculio, which is a shy flier. 



The mode in which the Plum Gouger deposits her egg in the 

 plum, differs radically from that adopted by the Plum Curculio and 

 explained in the preceding chapter. With the minute but powerful 

 jaws placed at the tip of her long and slender snout, the snout itself 

 being held at right angles to the surface on which she stands, she 

 first of all eats through the skin of the plum to a short depth, so as 

 to form a shallow cylindrical hole of precisely the same diameter as 

 her snout, and directed perpendicularly downwards. She then alters 

 from time to time the position of her snout, sloping it first in one 

 direction, and then in another, and then in another still, and all the 

 while working away with her jaws at the flesh of the fruit. By this 

 means she gradually gouges out a gourd-shaped hole, bellying inside 

 and quite small outside, till she has made an opening about four-fifths 

 as deep as her snout is long. The excavated matter is not thrown 

 out of the hole, as is done by a well-digger when he digs a well ; but 

 the ingenious workwoman eats her own chips as she works, and thu.-? 

 contrives to gratify her appetite for food, while she is at the same 

 time obeying that wonderful instinct of providing for her future 

 offspring, which Nature has implanted in all female insects without 

 exception. The hole being now sufficiently deep, and sufficiently 

 gouged out internally, the creature withdraws her snout leisurely and 

 gradually, and, pausing for a few seconds, seems to smack her lips 

 at the idea, that she has at one and the same time discharged her 

 duty towards society, and likewise tickled her own liquorish palate. 

 Alas ! that we poor human beings can so seldom enjoy that double 

 gratification ! And now her maternal feelings tell her that an egg 

 is ready to be born into this world. But she is standing with her 

 snout poised in the air over the excavation, which is intended to re- 

 ceive the egg. The egg-laying apparatus is at the other end of her 

 body. Do you suppose that she is going to drop an egg upon the 



