336 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK 



narrate, were mentioned to us by Mr. Payne of Madison, 

 who has closely and curiously observed this depredator. 



An incision is first made, of semicircular form, by a little 

 rostra or lancet which he carries in his head for this very 

 purpose. After the opening is made, the curculio deposits 

 an egg therein ; then changing positions again, it carefully, 

 with its fore legs, secures the egg in its nidus, and pats the 

 skin under the edge of which its treasure is hidden, with 

 repeated and careful efforts of its feet. Where fruit abounds 

 it deposits, usually, but one to a plum. But we have had 

 trees, just beginning to bear, whose few plums were scari 

 fied all over. 



The egg hatches to a worm, and this feeds on the plum, 

 causing it prematurely to fall; the insect issuing from it, 

 enters the ground, to undergo its transformations, and soon 

 to reappear, a beetle, ready for fresh mischief-making pro 

 pagation. 



The climate of the West is entirely glorious for all man 

 ner of insects. They can put the East to shame in the mat 

 ter of aphides, cockroaches, cutworms, army and wire- 

 worms, curculios, peach-worms, grubs, etc., etc. There are 

 many questions relating to the history of insects, about 

 which eastern writers are in doubt, not at all doubtful 

 with us. 



1. Do the larvae remain in the ground all the residue of 

 the summer, and come forth only in the ensuing spring ? 

 In cold latitudes it may be so. Harris says, that they 

 undergo their transformation in twenty days. Downing 

 admits this of a few stragglers. But the main supply of 

 bugs, he thinks, remains all summer and until spring, in the 

 ground. But with us the curculio is not exclusively an early 

 summer insect. It is found, in its appropriate haunts, 

 through the whole warm season. Mr. Payne put plums 

 containing the worms into a glass, and in eleven days 

 obtained full-grown curculios. In cool regions they pro 

 bably have but an annual generation; but in warm and 



