336 TRANSACTIONS OF THE AMERICAN INSTITUTE. 



drive it from one tree it will find another. Each female cur- 

 culio has several hundred eggs to dispose of, and if she can, will 

 take as many hundred young plums for their portions ; and I 

 think I see her laughing at you at the idea of disagreeable odors 

 stopping her in the performance of that duty. 



The curculio is a hard, black, rough beetle. A handful of 

 them, wdien at rest, with their legs and proboscis folded under 

 them, might be mistaken for a handful of hemp-seeds. Like 

 other beetles, their wings, when not in use, are covered by a case 

 or shell; the proboscis is long in proportion to their size, and is 

 the instrument with which they puncture the fruit, and is not, as 

 some suppose, an ovipositor. 



Persons familiar with the curculio seldom see them fly, though 

 it is supposed that they pass from tree to tree, or from orchard 

 •to orchard, upon the wing. Sometimes, when jarred from the 

 tree, they will open their wings, and instead of falling, Avill come 

 down at an angle, and light on some distant part of the sheet, or 

 on your person, or sometimes even fly off to another tree. They 

 seldom use their wings in passing from one part of the tree to 

 another. In cool weather they walk about deliberately, but in 

 the middle of hot days they are in a greater hurry. In cold wet 

 weather they are perfectly quiet, and are concealed under por- 

 tions of bark, or in the crevices of old wounds or knots in the 

 body or large branches of plum-trees. Like other insects, in 

 their last or winged state, the object of life is to arrange for the 

 continuation of their race. In their larva or grub condition, 

 they were nearly all stomach, and eating occupied their entire 

 time ; now, they have no stomach of any account, and they 

 scarcely eat at all ; consequently, they soon become exhausted, 

 and towards the last are but mere shells. 



The mark upon the fruit made by the curculio is crescent- 

 shaped, (and from that circumstance she is sometimes called the 

 Turk,) and looks like the indentation of the little finger-nail of 

 an infant, and the reason it is so is, that the insect, while making 

 it, remains standing on the fruit, in the same position, only 

 moving its head. When this crescent-shaped incision is com- 

 pleted, she introduces her proboscis its full length, from the 

 centre of the crescent towards where she stands, and immedi- 

 ately under the skin of the fruit, and at the bottom of this punc- 

 ture enlarges so as to be suitable for the reception of the egg. 

 This done, she turns and deposits the destined egg at -the^ 



