THE CURCULIO. 



57 



done so, I have been thus explicit on this point, to guard others against such an 

 expensive and awkward way of trying to outgeneral the Curculio, since reason and 

 observation teach us that it is of very little value. 



Salt and Lime as Curculio Remedies. In Hovey's Magazine for 1851, C. Good- 

 rich, of Burlington, Vt, gives the following experiments : " Flower-pots were filled 

 with garden soil, on which a layer of fine salt, a quarter of an inch thick, was depo- 

 sited. On this bed of salt were laid punctured plums containing grubs of the Curculio. 

 The grubs came out of the plums, and passed down through the salt into the soil, from 

 which perfect Curculios emerged some weeks afterwards. The same result took place 

 when fresh air-slacked lime was substituted for salt, and where soil alone was used. 

 The pots being exposed to the weather, the salt was soon washed into the soil, but 

 there was no difference in the appearance of all the insects." 



I have often performed such experiments, using the lime and salt not only 

 singly, but mixed. Ashes have been tried, flour of sulphur, snuff; but none of 

 these seemed to interfere with the safe transformation of the grub into the perfect 

 Curculio. The placing of such flower-pots in buildings where the earth would 

 become perfectly dry, gives a serious check to this process. My experience has been 

 that almost every one perishes, and this circumstance should be constantly borne in 

 mind when we are investigating the Curculio remedies, about which the testimony 

 is so conflicting. There are seasons when the ground becomes so dry that almost 

 the entire generation of this insect will perish from this cause. The next year the 

 plums will be but little injured wherever the drought prevailed the year before. 

 Remedies used in such seasons may possibly receive the credit they are not entitled 

 to from many who have not the knowledge to trace an effect to its cause. 



About the time that I was commencing the great battle with this insect for the 

 protection of my orchards of Plums and Apricots, I searched the books and agricultural 

 papers most carefully for Curculio remedies. Washes containing lime as the chief 

 ingredient were often found. In several numbers of the Horticulturist there were 

 communications from T. W. Ludlow, Jr., of Yonkers, on the Hudson River, N. Y., 

 so circumstantial that it really seemed as if the long-look ed-for remedy had been 

 found. I tried it faithfully. A coating of this lime mixture, thick enough to make 

 a plum look as a man does when his head is being moulded for his bust, would protect 

 them, but nothing short of that would. Ordinary whitewash was not regarded in the 



