PROCEEDINGS OF THE FARMERS' CLUB. 341 



droiiglit or some other contingency during its period of trans- 

 formation. 



Some people plant plum trees over water : some pave the 

 ground under them, and say that by these means they secure 

 crops. If so, it can only be explained by insect instinct, which 

 in this case teaches the parent that her little ones will not be 

 safe in falling in such places, and she therefore chooses other 

 trees. Our own understanding is so at fault in all attempts to 

 comprehend the wonders of the instinct of insects, that we will 

 not dispute this proposition, and to prevent others from sneering 

 at what may seem so absurd, we will relate an instance of the 

 instinct of another beetle still more wonderful. 



The cockchaffer is a favorite food of rooks and crows ; now if 

 the chaffer sees one of these enemies approaching, and has not 

 time to escape, instead of simulating death, as the curculio does, 

 by drawing up her limbs and trunk, and seeming like a little 

 round bud, he will sprawl his legs out at full length, and look 

 for all the world just like a dead ciiaffer ought to, knowing, from 

 instinct, that rooks will not eat bugs unless they kill them them- 

 selves. 



In visiting the New York markets, we see fruits from almost 

 every part of our country. The apricots, peaches, plums, and 

 early apples from Georgia, the Carolinas, and Virginia, have been 

 marked by the curculio. Later in the season, when the same 

 fruits come down from the north, the same unmistakable mark 

 is visible. Every j^ear a large portion of the apples are what 

 the country people call gnarly — have been tampered with by 

 the curculio ; many of them stung in several places, and so mis- 

 shapen in consequence, that but a mere section of the apple will 

 have a natural appearance. 



One summer in our experience we escaped the curculio. We 

 found here and there a few at first, but not one in a hundred of 

 ordinary seasons, and we had a crop of fruit without trouble,. 

 and that was to us a new sensation — as if we should experience 

 one season's exemption from mosquitoes in Newark. 



In our efforts to trace this strange circumstance to its cause, 

 we remembered that the year before there had been ?io rain in 

 thai immediate neiskhorhood. We had been often threatened with 

 showers, but they had always failed us, and the ground had be- 

 come as dry and parched as the Libyan deserts. Since then we 

 have gone through a series of experiments, and have found that 



