THE FARMER AT HOME. m 



soon as hatched, tumbles out the rest of the brood, and remains pos- 

 sessor of the nest, and the sole object of the future care of its uncon- 

 scious step-mother, the old sparrow. 



CURCULIO. In the United States, particularly, the class of 

 insects which prey on grain, plants, and fruit, is known by this name. 

 The ravages of the grain curculio are not so habitual as those 

 occasioned by the fruit variety of these animal nuisances. However, 

 when they do attack grain they are very destructive. Degur, the 

 celebrated entomologist, says that a few hundred of them admitted to 

 a granary, would, in the course of four or five months, destroy be- 

 tween one and two hundred millions of grains. But a single hole is 

 made in a kernel, and but one egg deposited in each. Barley is a 

 favorite grain with the curculio, or weavil, as it is also called ; and 

 small heaps of this placed in granaries, and occasionally removed or 

 subjected to boiling water, are used in some places as decoys for the 

 insect, and to prevent their settling on wheat. 



To the ravages of the fruit curculio, which take place every year, 

 and in some cases to the total destruction of the crop, no effectual 

 antidote has been found. Several have been resorted to, but at best, 

 only with partial success. Their attacks on the plum and apricot 

 are the most fatal. They make a circular or half moon invasion on 

 the young fruit, and then under the flap of the wound deposit an egg, 

 which speedily becomes a worm and feeds on the juices or pulp of the 

 fruit. The curculio during the day lies concealed in the branches of 

 the tree ; and, it is said, that if previous to the setting of the fruit, 

 cloths are spread beneath on the ground, and then a violent blow ap- 

 plied to the trunk, most of the insects will fall upon the cloths so that 

 they can be gathered up and destroyed. This operation must be 

 repeated time after time, and will in this way do something in caus- 

 ing their destruction ; but, it is tedious and in most cases insufficient. 

 The fruit that contains the grub, after a while falls to the ground, the 

 worm takes refuge in the earth, emerges the perfect insect, ready to 

 renew its depredation on the young fruit. To prevent this, all such 

 fruit should at once be gathered up and destroyed, by giving it to the 

 hogs or otherwise, which \Till also destroy the embryo curculio. 

 Where swine can come to the trees, they will constantly devour the 

 worm as well as the fruit, and thus -ender an essential service to the 

 horticulturist. 



CURDLING-. The coagulating or fixing of any fluid*body ; par- 

 ticularly milk, by means of rennet. Pausanias says, that Aristseus, 

 son of Apollo, and Gyrene, daughter of the river Peneus, were the 

 first who found the secret of curdling milk. At Florence they curdle 

 their milk for the making of cheese with artichoke flowers ; in lieu of 

 the rennet used for the same purpose among us. The Bisaltae, a 

 people of Macedonia, Rochfort observes, live wholly upon curdled 



