THE CURCULIO. 1O1 



those found collected in clusters under the boards were the same. I immediately 

 wrote again, inclosing a few dry specimens in a quill, and a part of Plate 8 of this 

 book. The following is her answer : 



" JOHNSONVILLE, March \, 1865. 



" Yours of the 2/th was received last night, and I hasten to reply. The Curculios you send, we con- 

 sider identical with those we caught under the boards ; although dry and contracted we can see how they 

 ought to look. The one in the drawing looks very natural, but they do not always wait till the fruit is so 

 large here, before they begin the work of destruction. 



" I will keep these specimens and the drawing for further comparison. 



" MRS. HENRY WIER, 

 " Johnsonville P. O., Pittstown, 



"Rensselaer County, New York." 







Mrs. W. states in one of her letters that she has no record of the time when 

 these insects were found, but that the trellises for the grape vines were put up on the 

 12th of May, and that these boards had been drawn for that purpose and laid under 

 a plum tree near by, a few days before. If the printers now at work setting the 

 types of this volume would wait patiently another month, I think this question of the 

 winter condition of the Curculio could be ascertained ; but as this cannot be done, I 

 will here indulge for once in a theory a speculation : That this insect remains 

 through the fall, winter, and early spring, very near the surface of the ground, in the 

 little cracks or fissures where bare, and about the roots of the grass where in sod. If 

 this should prove true, it may lead to some new modes of treatment ; though I can- 

 not imagine at present anything that would supersede the plan of thoroughly destroy- 

 ing all the young fruit containing the embryo insect. 



Poultry have been proved to be useful. If these little beetles lie at all in sight 

 of their sharp eyes during the winter, keep them as much as possible among the fruit 

 trees, provided the crop had been troubled with the Curculio the season before. 

 There is much weather of every winter when the ground is bare of snow that the 

 poultry will be found searching the fields and meadows for insects. If the Curculio is 

 within reach, let the sharp eyes of the poultry have a chance. 



In February a year ago my friend John T. Hicks, of Westbury, Long Island, 

 N. Y., showed me a box containing the contents of the stomach of a crow that had 

 been shot a few days before. The box contained a few beetles, and about fifty grass- 

 hoppers. Some of these were of the variety so plentiful late in the fall, but the greater 

 part were of that kind that we find in the spring about half grown, and not yet hav- 

 ing their wings matured such as are at full size in July. Many do not know that 

 grasshoppers live through the winter ; many do not know that crows eat insects. The 



