THE CURCULIO. Ql 



believe in the doctrine of original sin can know very little about boys, who, it 

 was plainly to be seen, had been at work here. Some boys would be as useful as 

 pigs or cows in destroying defective fruit, but others are good for nothing, as they 

 spit out the worms. 



July 31. I have been examining the colonies of young Curculios. Those from 

 the plums are nearly all perfected ; that is, the grubs have become beetles. The 

 worm, as we call it, as met with in the fruit, has become a winged insect, as unlike 

 its former self as a bud would be unlike a blossom, or a tadpole unlike a frog. 

 About one in ten were still under the ground, their transformation not yet completed. 

 One only had not yet begun to change, but had made its cell, and was waiting. 

 The apples are producing very few Curculios in proportion to the number stung, 

 which appeared to have fallen prematurely from that cause. 



The Curculio, during the fall, feeds on both leaves and fruits. It will make 

 plums or soft apples or pears cellular with little excavations into the pulp. Often 

 it will be found stuck fast and dead in the fruit that has rotted. 



The Curculio requires plenty of air. It will soon die in a box or vial if the air 

 is excluded ; but I have kept them for weeks in pint or quart glass bottles with large 

 mouths, if covered with milliner., or corks with holes in. In their efforts to escape 

 they will often work through botli millinet and cork. I have known them nibble 

 the latter till it became perfectly cellular, and they were covered with the dust, as 

 a bee often is with pollen. 



Aug. l. In a walk in one of our quiet streets, where most of the houses have 

 neat little gardens attached, I noticed two Apricot trees with a fair crop of fruit, and 

 quite ripe. Apricots this year are small, owing to the excessive drought, and these 

 were a small variety, but very pretty, the rich yellow giving them a tempting look. 

 Moorparks would have been three times the size. These Apricot trees were as large 

 as old Plum trees. There are few more elegant ornaments of the home than such 

 trees when loaded with ripe Apricots; which besides giving plenty for the family, 

 enable us to send a basketful to an invalid friend, or the wounded soldier in a mili- 

 tary hospital. This world is not yet quite all bad, and it can soon be improved if we 

 go to work resolutely and save the fruits. Reader, take another look at the Apricot 

 in the Frontispiece, and then say, the Curculio shall no longer stand let&een thee and me, 

 and let all the neighbors say Amen. 



In a further walk to-day through several of the streets of this city, where 

 well-to-do mechanics live, I noticed that most of the Plum trees bore some fruit, 



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