86 THE KANSAS CHERRY, 



ANOTHER CURCULIO CATCHER. 



The curculio attacking quinces, plums, peaches and a few other 

 fruits is but little affected by spraying mixtures of any kind. The 

 mouth-parts of the insect are elongated in the form of a beak, and 

 when the curculio damages the fruit, very little if any of the poison- 

 ous substances which may have been applied in the spraying solution 

 is taken into the system. The most effective means of combating the 

 insect, therefore, is to take advantage of its habit of dropping to the 

 ground when alarmed. If a cloth is spread under the tree and the 

 limbs struck with gome kind of a pole, the insects will drop at once 

 onto the sheet and can be collected and destroyed. 



Placing the sheet about the trees is a slow process. Consequently, 

 the Cornell station has suggested a device. It consists of an arrange- 

 ment built on the jDlan of a double- wheeled wheelbarrow with much 

 elongated axle. On this are arranged a number of projecting arms ra- 

 diating from a point midway between the two wheels. A canvas or 

 any kind of cloth is attached to these arms, with an opening on the 

 far side large enough to admit the trunk of the tree. This is very 

 inexpensive and easily bailt. 



The time to begin jarring is still a question, but as the curculio 

 are usually more active in the early morning, j)ossibly the work had 

 best be done then. These beetles begin operations as early as May, 

 and it will not do to delay jarring them much after they appear. 

 Some years they will not appear until the latter part of July. Those 

 w^io practice this method successfully jar the trees every day until 

 the numbers are so small that they do not affect the fruit seriously. 

 In one orchard, noted by the Cornell station in 1897, 200 curculio 

 were jarred from seven trees, and it is not uncommon to get as high 

 as fifty from one tree at a single jarring. This process involves con- 

 siderable labor and expense, but it costs only about fifteen to twenty 

 cents per tree for one season. After the insects are captured they can 

 be destroyed by the most convenient method. Some put them in 

 kerosene or boiling water, while others have a charcoal stove built for 

 the purpose, in which everything that falls on the sheet is burned. — 

 Orange Judd Farmer. 



