INSECTS — INJURIOUS AND BENEFICIAL 



193 



6. Plum Curculio. — The plum curculio is a beetle, that is, 

 an insect with a set of shell-like wings covering its true wings. 

 The curculio head and mouth parts are prolonged into a 

 proboscis. The curculio lays its eggs on plums, cherries, 

 peaches, apricots, pears, and apples. The beetle itself feeds 



34. A CURCULIO CATCHER 



The insects are jarred on to the sheet and then swept into a bucket and killed 



By courtesy of the New York {Cornell) Experiment Station 



on the foliage of these trees, and when the fruit is about the 

 size of a marble it makes a crescent-shaped slit in the skin, 

 raises the flap, and puts an egg under it. This soon hatches 

 and the larva bores down to the seed of the fruit. This 

 causes the plums, peaches, apricots, and cherries to fall off 

 and rot. The larva develops in the rotten fruit, comes out 

 and hides away until next spring. Those in the apples and 

 pears cannot develop unless the fruit falls off from some other 

 cause. If there are hogs and sheep in the orchard to eat up the 



