101 



. latter ; but only a very small percentage of these seem to contain eggs. 

 No doubt such punctures greatly injure and disfigure the fruit, and 

 the gum that exudes from them exhausts, to no purpose, the vital en- 

 ergies of the tree. Still, a plum that is simply punctured, without 

 any egg being deposited in it, is not totally destroyed ; for the wound 

 is but temporary, and nature can generally repair the damage. But 

 whenever an egg is inserted in the wounded part, then, unless that 

 egg fails to hatch out, or the young larva dies of disease, the unhappy 

 plum is doomed; for soon the resistless energies of the larva are, 

 day after day, eating into its vitals. It is immaterial whether the 

 larva, after hatching out, burrows exclusively in the flesh of the plum, 

 as in the case of the Curculio; or whether, passing through the flesh 

 as rapidly as possible, it strikes a bee-line for the kernel, as in the case 

 of the Gouger. In either case, the fate of that plum is premature 

 death ; the only difference being, that the plum stung by the Curculio 

 perishes in its infancy, while that which is stung by the Gouger 

 attains a sickly and stunted manhood before it finally perishes. 



In illustration of the wide difference between the respective hab- 

 its of the Curculio and the Gouger, I will give a few statistics : 1st. 

 On June 34th I placed 165 wild plums, all of them more or less 

 copiously punctured by the Gouger, and none of them, so far as t 

 could perceive, with any crescent-slits, in a similar glass vase to those 

 already described in preceding experiments. (Above, .pp. 90 — 1 .) 

 From this vase, which was treated in the same manner as the others, 

 I expected to have bred several Gougers. I did not breed a solitary 

 one ; and all the insects that I obtained from this whole lot of plums, 

 were two Curculios that came out, respectively, July 30th and Au- 

 gust ]st. Neither, on examining the sand at the bottom of the vase on 

 November 39th, could I discover the remains of either larva, pupa 

 or perfect insect, that had perished there prematurely. As two verit- 

 able Plum Curculios were bred from this lot of 165 plums, I presume 

 that there must have been at least two crescent-slits on them, which 

 I inadvertently overlooked. 3d. From the vase of wild plums, gath- 

 ered July 37th, the details of which have been already given, (above, 

 p. 91), I bred, as I showed before, no less than 51 Curculios; and 

 yet, from this same lot — which, be it remembered, was gathered off 

 the tree promiscuously and without any selection — I obtained only 

 two Gougers, which came out, respectively, August 34th and 36th. 

 The reason of all this is pretty plain. A plum inhabited by the 

 Gouger larva would naturally hang on the tree, so that the kernel 

 would become fully developed ; and by plucking all these plums more 

 or less prematurely from the tree, I caused the premature death of a 



