PEACH AND THE PEAR. IO3 



the bark and leaf-stems of the tree. Harris believes 

 the male and female pair in the autumn, the male perish- 

 ing, and the female surviving the winter ; this study he 

 made on the apple aphis ; the following spring the 

 female lays her eggs. He says that after the meeting of 

 the sexes the body of the female increases in size and 

 becomes convex, and now serves to shelter the eggs. 

 The eggs, when matured, pass under the mother's body, 

 and this shrinks, gradually, until nothing is left but the 

 dry outer convex skin, when the mother dies and the 

 body protects the eggs until hatched — and if not large 

 enough a kind of down is thrown out, which completes 

 the covering. Birds destroy these lice, and they are also 

 destroyed, Harris says, by parasites within them. The 

 best wash to destroy them, Harris gives as follows : 

 Two parts soft soap and eight parts water, with lime 

 enough to make a thick white-wash ; work thoroughly 

 into the crevices of the bark and parts affected. 

 CURCULIO. 

 The Curculio, according to Dr. S. Kneeland, is a 

 small beetle. The perfect insect is one-fifth of an inch 

 long, dark brown, with white, yellow, and black spots. 

 Shaken from a tree it feigns death and looks like, merely, 

 a dried bud — it has a curved snout bent under the thorax 

 when at rest, which is the instrument with which the 

 curculio makes the crescent-shaped puncture in the fruit 

 and in which it deposits the ^%% — the jaw is at the end of 



