Apple bisects. 469 



be attended with difficulty, if not absolute impossibility. Ratze- 

 burg, indeed, thinks that, if they are not too numerous, they are 

 useful to trees, as they secure them from being overburdened with 

 fruit. If they are too numerous (and it is worth while to look 

 closely at the buds in the spring months to ascertain the fact), 

 they should be disturbed whilst laying their eggs by shaking the 

 trees. Ratzeburg also recommends that bandages of tar should 

 be applied, early in April, round the stem of the trees, whereby, as 

 the beetles always creep up the tree, they would be captured and 

 killed. It is only in the hottest spring weather that they fly 

 from tree to tree; and it has been decidedly proved that trees 

 which have been thus bandaged have not been so much infested 

 as those which have not. Frisch, also, says that the trees must 

 be cut and manured, as from experience he found that the weak 

 trees have the greatest number of insects, and that healthy trees, 

 the buds of which have not suffered by cold, had few or no 

 insects. Moreover, in standard or low trees, it is advisable to 

 pick off' the withered buds, taking care to do this before the 

 beetle has escaped ; and, if done at a still earlier period, the 

 remaining healthy buds will acquire greater energy of growth. 

 The buds must then be carefully destroyed, and thus much 

 mischief in the following year will be prevented. I presume the 

 insect described in M. Lyonnet's posthumous memoirs (4to, 

 p. 120.)? under the name of " Scarabee a trompe, dont le ver nuit 

 a la fertility des jjoiners," pi. xii. f. 13 — 19., is identical with the 

 Anthonomus pomorum. 



Bouche, in his various works, states that the petals of the 

 apple blossom are tied by threads spun by the larva, so as to 

 prevent their expansion ; but this 1 do not think is the case, at 

 least with the insect in question. Bouche was probably led to 

 make this observation, by mistaking the attacks of some of the 

 web-spinning caterpillars for those of the Anthonomus. The 

 genus in question comprises several other species which in- 

 fest the buds of fruit. A. j^edicularius, a pretty red species, has 

 been found by Mr. Curtis on the crab tree when in flower ; and I 

 presume it is of this species which Salisbury speaks, as a small 

 red weevil, which lays its eggs in the bloom buds of the apple ; 

 he adds, however, that the larvae draw up the whole bunch of 

 blossoms into a cluster by means of their web, and that the grub, 

 when full fed, falls to the ground, in which it passes the pupa 

 state. These two circumstances differ materially from the habits 

 of A. pomorum ; nor do I think that the former of them is ap- 

 plicable to any species of Anthonomus, but has its origin in the 

 proceedings of a species of moth. The small brown weevils, A. 

 druparum and A. incurvus, are very destructive to the birdcherry, 

 and other stone fruit; and A. ulmi inhabits the elms, in the buds of 

 which the larva? live, and may be found at the end of May. 



HH 3 



