THE PRACTICAL ENTOMOLOGIST. 



71 



FIGHTING THE CURCULIO. 



In the Genesee. Fanner for 1853, p. 125, maybe 

 found the following decidedly original mode of 

 heuding off the " Jjittle Turk," from the pen of a, 

 Canadian correspondent. 



It would have done you good had tou seen my JefFersons, 

 Washingtons, Huling's fcjuperbs, Green-gages, Columbias, 

 Golden Drops, Apricots and Nectarines last year, all bend- 

 ing under a tremendous load of the finest fruits ever be- 

 held in the neighborhood of Fort Dalhousie, saved as fol- 

 lows: — Placed two or three well-made windmills in the 

 head of each tree, with a clapper attached to each, which 

 struck upon a piece of steel, and when the wind blew 

 kept up a terrible jingling noise ; one and a half yards of 

 flag tied up so as to float nicely in the air, as close to the 

 tree as possible without touching it; and lastly, when 

 dinner was over each day, I would catch up a sheet made 

 for the purpose, and say, ''Come, boys, hold the sheet," 

 and I would jar the trees and kill all that fell upon it. 



This reminds one of the old receipt for making 

 good rich soup out of flint stones, which runs as 

 follows : — 



Take three or four large flint stones ; wash thera very 

 nice and clean, and let them simmer without boiling in 

 two gallons of clear water for four hours, till the water 

 has e.ttracted nearly all the richness from them. Lastly, 

 add three pounds of fresh baef, a few handfuls of sliced 

 carrots and turnips, and a spoonful or two of sweet herbs, 

 pepper and salt, and boil the whole for two hours longer. 

 It would do you good to taste this soup and see how rich 

 and palatable it is, and all made out of such cheap and 

 common ingredients as flint stones. 



I take it that the "windmills" and the "flags" 

 were of no more use towards heading off the Cur- 

 culio, than the flint-stones were towards making 

 the rich soup. Without the "jarring" process, the 

 Curculio recipe would be as ineffectual as the 

 Flint soup recipe would be without the beef and 

 trimmings. But the fools are not all dead yet; and 

 when one does die, he always leaves a large family 

 behind him. b. d. w. 



[From the Cincinnati Gazette, Ohio, August, 1866.] 

 . A few mornings since, Mr. B. F. Davidson, who resides 

 on Madison street, between York and Columbia, in New- 

 port, Ohio, was greatly astonished, upon rising at an early 

 Lour, to find his yard coveredto the depth of several inches 

 with butterflies, the most of them dead, and the balance 

 so benumbed apparently as to be unable to move much. 

 The bodies of the insects were as large as a man's forefin- 

 ger, and their wings measured six inches from tip to tip. 

 How they got into Mr. Davidson's yard, when not oue 

 was to be found in any other place in the city, is quite a 

 mystery. Our informant thinks that there must have 

 been ten bushels of them. Boys were engaged all morn- 

 ing in carrying them off by the basketful. 



Observations by B. D. ^Y. — From the state- 

 ment that the bodies of these so-called butterflies 

 "were as large as a man's forefinger," it is evident that 

 they were not butterflies, but moths; and from the 

 expanse of their wings being stated as "six inches," 

 they must have been some one of the four species 

 of Attacus common in the United States, probably 

 the Attacus cecropia* of Linnaeus, the larva of 

 which feeds on Fruit-trees, &c., and which I have 

 recently found actually feeding on Hickory, the 

 usual food-plant of Attacus hma. No other case is 

 on record of these insects occurring in large num- 

 bers; but the papers have recently contained ac- 



• * I find a notice in the Prairie Farmer (July 21, 186(5,) 

 about the larvae o{ Attacus ceeropia having "almost strip- 

 ped" an apple-tree. 



counts of flocks of butterflies, several miles long, 

 occurring in California and the Eastern States. 

 Many such cases are also on record in Europe. 

 All our U. S. butterflies may be readily distinguish- 

 ed from moths by haviug a knob at the tip ot their 

 anteiinse ; and most moths are torpid or "benumb- 

 ed" by day. It is very desirable that, when cases 

 of this kind occur, a few specimens should be sent 

 to some reliable Entomologist, so as to verify the 

 species. 



ANSWERS TO CORRESPONDENTS. 



Tlios. L. J. Baldwiiii Delaware. — The blister-Iikc eleva- 

 tions on the tubers of your potatoes, each about ^ inch in 

 diameter, and many of them run together into confluent 

 groups, with almost all these blisters burst open above, 

 and showing inside a rough, Bcaly, brown surface, are, I 

 have little doubt, caused by some insect or other. But 

 what insect ? That question is difficult to answer, with- 

 out receiving fresh specimens at various seasons of the 

 year, from the time that j'ou first notice this scabby ap- 

 pearance on your potatoes to the end of the autumn. As 

 you say yourself, that you believe this '* scab" on the po- 

 tato to be the work of some insect, and yet that " you have 

 not as yet been able to fasten the guilt on any insect, 

 though you have been watching closely for several 

 years," I should infer that the damage must be d(me by 

 some species of such a minute size, that it escaped your 

 notice. Otherwise it might be attributed to the depreda- 

 tions of some Snake-millipede. (iw^ii-s- — see Practical En- 

 tomologist, II. p. 34, and figure) or centipede, or of some 

 insect-larva, such as those of the Click-beetles [Elaier 

 family) or the common White Grub, which is the larva 

 of the May-bug, {Lachtosienia qucrcina.) 



Inside one of the blister-like scabs, in one of the two 

 specimens sent, I found fnur thread-like milk-white cy- 

 lindrical larvre, over ^ inch long and 10 or 12 times as 

 long as wide, with a large shining jet black head. These 

 evidently belong to the Order Diptera, (two-winged flies,) 

 and, I think, to the Mycetophila family, and probably to^ 

 the genus iSrirtj'a in that family. From the presence of 

 their excrements in many other "^ scabs," which contained 

 no larvee, I infer that most of the •' scabs," perhaps all of 

 them, were formerly tenanted b}' these same larvse; but 

 that the great bulk of these larvse went underground be- 

 fore the potatoes were dug, to pass into the pupa state 

 and come out into the winged fly state next summer, in 

 time to infest other potatoes. The insect that would be 

 produced from these larvje, if they had lived, would be a 

 minute gnat, resembling a mosquito, except that its legs 

 are shorter, and it has got no long beak to suck blood 

 with. 



I incline to suspect that it is these insects that cause 

 the "scab" in your potatoes, and that not improbably they 

 have been introduced along with seed-potatoes from Eu- 

 rope. At all events, I have never heard of any such 

 "scab" among potatoes in the Valley of the Mississippi. 

 There are several species of Scicu-a, which are known to 

 infest rotten potatoes in England, and some observers 

 there have believed that they were the cause of what is 

 called "'scab" in that country on the tuber of the potato, 

 which mayor may not be identical with your "scab." 

 ^See Curtis's Farm Jtisect^, pp. 460 — 1, where a larva very 

 like yours is figured and described as breeding in dccay- 

 in% potatoes in England, and producing a certain species 

 o( Sciara.) It is possible, however, that the ** scab*' on 

 your jiotatoes may be caused by some insect, entirely dif- 

 ferent from these which I find in the specimens sent by 

 you ; and that the latter have merely bred there, as they 

 would breed in any other mass of decaying vegetable 

 matter. I can only decide this point on the receipt of 

 additional specimens during the ensuing summer. 



That your " scab" is caused by the action of some 

 insect depositing its egg in or near the immature tuber, 

 say about June or Jul}', seems to be indicated by the fact 

 which you mention, namely, that " the tubers first formed 

 are the ones most affected, and that it is those >vhich are 

 evidentlyof later growth that retain their natural smooth 

 surface." This hypothesis is further confirmed by the 



