THE PRACTICAL ENTOMOLOGIST. 



79 



■wliole acres of the most superb plums, and slaugh- 

 ters the Curculio wholesale, and at railroad veloci- 

 ty, with his murderous machine. 



All the other proposed remedies are mere moon- 

 shine, or at all events have not yet been fully 

 tested. You can diminish next year's crop of Cur- 

 culio, by destroying the wormy fruit as it falls ; 

 but when the Curculio is already upon you, de- 

 stroying your fruit day after day, you can only 

 subdue him with certainty by the jarring pro- 

 cess. Those who desire to see a whole string of 

 supposed remedies against the Curculio catalogued 

 and refuted, can read Dr. Trimble's book. I will 

 only add here, that a writer in the Country Gen- 

 tleman (April 19, 1866) recommends fencing out 

 this insect from growing fruit, by surrounding the 

 but of the tree with a bandage covered with some 

 sticky kind of paint, because, as he observes, '• it is 

 saifl that the female curculio cannot fly, but crawls 

 up the tree, and when she attempts to pass over the 

 paint she becomes impaled there and perishes." 

 He might just as well recommend building a tight 

 board fence round every corn-field, to fence out the 

 crows and the blackbirds. For, as has been already 

 shown, both male and female curculios can and do 

 fly as well as any bii-d, during the warm part of the 

 day. 



There is, however, one other mode of fighting the 

 Curculio, which is recommended on such high au- 

 thority, that it must not be omitted here, although 

 I confess to a little skepticism as to its being as 

 universally reliable as is represented. It will be 

 found in the following communication to this Jour- 

 nal, from the pen of Mr. N. W. Bliss, the Secretary 

 of the Warsaw (111.) Horticultural Society. 



During the season of 185fi, Mr. Jas. B. Matthews, now 

 of Marietta, 0., had six or eight Chickasaw plums of extra 

 quality, growing in a cluster in his garden, in Warsaw. 

 On i of these he began throwing air-slacked lime, as soon 

 as the fruit set, and continued it after every rain, and 

 sometimes after a heavy dew, shov/ering the trees till 

 they were white with the fine dust. On one or two trees 

 he used none at all ; and on the remainder he commenced 

 using the lime after the Curculio had attacked the fruit. 

 The liftie dust was applied as often as once a week. Re- 

 sult — not one plum on those trees on which he did not 

 use lime — a full crop of good fruit on those on which he 

 commenced using lime early — and on those on which tlie 

 Curculios had begun their attack before he began to apply 

 the lime, he drove them entirely away and saved a por- 

 tion of the crop. I followed the same plan, and saved 

 so many plums as to break down my trees, as I was ab- 

 sent from home, and so did not have a chance to thin out 

 the fruit, though I had the lime applied faithfully while 

 I was away. 



The following from that distinguished Horticul- 

 turist, F. K. Phoenix, of Bloomington, 111., is to 

 the same efiect, so far as it goes. But we should 

 observe that in the case recorded by this gentle- 

 man, the remedy was only tested on one single tree 

 for two successive years, and in Mr. Matthews's 

 case only on a few trees for a single year. Unfor- 

 tunately, Mr. Bliss has forgotten to tell us, upon 

 how many trees he himself experimented or whe- 

 ther he continued the application of lime for more 

 than one season. 



A neighbor amateur has this year grown about a 

 bushel of most delicious Imperial" Gage Plums on one 

 tree, passed to him some three years siuce by a brother, 



who said, "No use for him to try to grow plums!" After 

 it was jdanted out one year, the family wood-pile was 

 corded up under and about it, and after the fruit had set, 

 and so long as any fears of Curculio were entertained, a 

 plentiful supply of air-slacked lime dust was scattered 

 over the top every week. Last year it had a peck, and 

 this year a bushel or so, and here you have the whole 

 story. — From the MorticuHurist 



Where the Curculio has already deposited its 

 egg in any particular fruit, that fruit may be saved 

 without any material damage, by cutting out the 

 egg or the very young larva with a penknife or any 

 other convenient tool. It is found that the wound 

 soon heals over and leaves but a slight scar behind. 

 But this is too slow and troublesome a process to 

 adopt, except where young trees are fruiting for 

 the first time, and it is desirable to test the quality 

 of the fruit at any expense of time and labor. 



It may interest some to know, that although 

 they have a snout-beetle in Europe which attacks 

 plums somewhat after the fashion of our " Little 

 Turk," yet, according to Mr. Glover, he saw 

 no insect, in bis recent visit to the Entomological 

 Convention in France, "which approximated our 

 plum weevil in either numbers, manner of attack, 

 or destruotiveness." (^Agric. Rep. 1865, p. 90.) 

 Mr. Stainton, however, states that the larva of a 

 minute moth — the Opadia/unebrana ofTreitschke 

 — " feeds in the interior of plums [in England], 

 and is very common, as tliose^who are in the habit 

 of preserving plums well know." (^Entom. Ann. 

 1855, p. 54.) But as Mr. Stainton says that he 

 only lias two specimens of this moth, "and believes 

 that a few others have been since met with," the 

 word " common " seems to be used here in its en- 

 tomological and not in its popular sense. 

 THE PLUM GOUGER.— ^nMonoOTMS prunicida Walsh. 



This insect has nearly the same habits as the 

 common " Curculio," and in northern and central 

 Illinois is at least equally common, being often 

 found in company with it on the same tree, and ap- 

 pearing and disappearing at about the same time of 

 the year. Many have confounded it with the "Cur- 

 culio," and one fruit-grower informed me that he 

 had noticed it on his plum-trees, but had always 

 supposed it to be the male of the "Curculio" — 

 which it mo.st certainly is not. In two remarkable 

 respects, it differs in its habits from the " Curculio." 

 1st. It bores, not a crescent-shaped slit, but a 

 round hole like the puncture of a pin wherein to 

 deposit its egg, as many as five or six such holes 

 being often mefcuij^'ith on a single plum, with the 

 gum copiously exuding from each. 2nd. The 

 young larva hatched out from the egg, instead of 

 living permanently iu the flesh of the fruit, bores 

 its way in to the kernel, and thereafter devours the 

 substance of that kernel exclusively. — Occasionally, 

 at all events, and probably as a general rule, the 

 larva of this snout-beetle, instead of going under- 

 ground to tran,sform into the pupa state, as that of 

 the common "Curculio" almost always does, trans- 

 forms inside the stone of the fruit which it inha- 

 bits, the perfect beetle emerging as usual, through 

 a round hole which the larva had previously cut for 

 that express purpose. As fruits infested by this in- 

 sect fall prematurely to the ground, just as when 



