YALE AGRICULTURAL LECTURES. 31 



12 on the pear, 16 on the peach, 17 on the plum, 85 on the 

 cherry, and 30 on the grape. Prominent among these is the 

 plum weevil, or curculio, which Dr. Fitch stigmatized as the 

 worst insect of our country ; for though the midge is at pres 

 ent causing a greater amount of pecuniary loss, he thought 

 its career would be like that of its predecessor, the Hessian fly, 

 and that it would eventually be mastered and subdued by its 

 parasite destroyers. Unlike the wheat midge, the curculio is a 

 native insect of this country, which has now been known up 

 wards of a century, during all of which time it appears to 

 have gradually multiplied and increased its forces, without any 

 important cessations or intervals in its ravages no parasite de 

 stroyer of it having ever been discovered till within a few 

 months past. It was first noticed by the botanists Collinson 

 and Bartram, in 1746, as totally destroying the nectarines 

 in and about Philadelphia, while the plums were but slightly 

 molested. Their turn came next, however, and each subse 

 quent investigator found it ravaging a different section of 

 country. Notwithstanding the volumes written upon it, we 

 do not to this day know where the curculio lives, and what it 

 is doing for three-quarters of the year. All that is currently 

 known of it is, that it is a small brown and white beetle, 

 which makes its appearance on plum-trees when the young fruit 

 is half grown ; that it cuts a crescent-shaped slit upon the side 

 of the fruit and drops an egg into the wound, from which egg a 

 small white worm hatches, which burrows in the fruit, causing 

 it to wilt and fall from the tree, whereupon the worm crawls in 

 to the ground to repose for two or three weeks during its pupa 

 state ; and that it comes out in the latter part of July a beetle, like 

 the parent which six weeks before stung the fruit. This, which 

 is currently supposed to be the main and essential part of its 

 history, Dr. Fitch judges to be quite the reverse ; and he is 

 convinced that if there were no fruit for the curculio to eat, it 

 would still thrive to its entire satisfaction. 



In New England and New York, the beetle may be found 



