Insefts and Diseases. 155 



lowing experiment : On shaking it well, I caught five curculios ; 

 on jarring it with the hand, I caught twelve more ; and on striking 

 the tree with a stone, eight more dropped on the sheets. I was now 

 convinced that I had been in an error ; and calling in the necessary 

 assistance, and using a hammer to jar the tree violently, we caught 

 in less than an hour, more than two hundred and sixty of these 

 insects." With large trees, it may be necessary to jar each limb 

 separately, by means of a pole. 



The best time for this work is in the cool of the morning, when 

 the insects are partly torpid with cold, and drop quickly. At mid- 

 day they retain their hold more tenaciously, and more quickly 

 escape. The work should be commenced very early in the season, 

 as soon as the fruit begins to set, or is not larger than a small pea. 

 With properly stiffened muslin frames, a few minutes are sufficient 

 for many trees, and labor equal in the aggregate to that of a single 

 entire day, may save large and valuable crops. 



2. The other class of remedies includes the different means of 

 destroying the fallen fruit as soon as it drops, and before the larvae 

 escape to the earth. One of these consists in beating the ground 

 smooth or paving beneath the tree, sweeping up the fallen fruit 

 daily, and feeding it to swine, or otherwise destroying it. 



Confinement 'of Swine. But more easily applied than the last, 

 is the confinement of swine beneath the trees. They immediately 

 pick up and destroy the punctured fruit. Experience has thorough- 

 ly established the efficiency of this method, where a sufficient num- 

 ber of swine has been allowed the run of the orchard. Geese and 

 hens are, to a limited extent, useful in repelling or destroying the 

 curculio. 



To apply this remedy most efficiently, all the trees of the apricot, 

 nectarine, and plum, should be planted apart from the rest of the 

 orchard, so that swine may be exclusively confined among them, 

 where they should be allowed to remain the whole season, except 

 during the period of the ripening of the fruit. It will be quite 

 necessary, however, to protect all the younger trees from these 

 animals by encasing them in board boxes, or by tying round them a 

 mass of sweet-brier limbs, or other densely prickly or thorny plant. 



Dr. Kirtland says : " This insect, in one season, destroyed every 

 plum on my farm, except the crop of one tree in my swine lot ; that 

 tree is bending under its load of fruit." A cultivator in western 

 New York, by the large number of hogs kept in his plum-yard, had 

 abundant crops for more than twenty successive years, while his 

 neglectful neighbors lost the greater part of theirs. It may, how- 



