68 INSECT RECORD FOR 1899 



From a hundred apples received later from the same orchard, 

 many adult Curculios were reared in August, as well as a few 

 Codling Moths which emerged in July. Mr. Roberts esti- 

 mated that ninety-nine per cent of the apples in an orchard 

 of a hundred trees had been stung by the insect. 



The Plum Curculio has long been known as one of the most 

 troublesome pests infesting fruits. Although it more com- 

 monly affects plums, cherries, and peaches, it has repeatedly 

 been found to injure apples. The adult or fully developed 

 insect is a small hard-shelled beetle about a quarter of an inch 

 long; it is of a mottled brown color, and has a well-developed 

 snout as well as four humps or tubercles on its back. This 

 adult beetle passes the winter under shelter on the ground. 

 In spring it appears in the orchard about the time the leaves 

 begin to come out, and nibbles at their green surfaces as well 

 as at the flowers when they appear. A little later, Avhen the 

 blossoms fall and the fruit *^sets," these beetles eat small holes 

 out of the surface. All of this nibbling is to satisfy the hunger 

 of the adult beetles, but when the fruit is fairly set the female 

 beetles cut crescent-shaped marks in the skin and deposit their 

 eggs in the pulp. These eggs hatch in a week or so into little 

 grubs that feed upon the green inner part of the fruit, grad- 

 ually working towards the pit. They become full-grown in 

 this grub state in a few weeks, and by that time the infested 

 fruit is likely to have fallen to the ground. Then the grubs 

 or larvae leave the fruit and go into the soil a short distance. 

 Here they change the third stage of life — the pupa stage — 

 and a few weeks later again change and come forth as fully 

 developed beetles. There is generally but one brood a year. 



In plum orchards the accepted means of preventing the 

 injuries of the Curculio has long been that of jarring the 

 insects onto some sort of cloth-covered frame in which they 

 are caught. More recently it has been learned that a consid- 

 erable proportion of the adult weevils can be killed by spraying 

 with Paris green or other form of arsenites. This method is 

 successful in orchards of good size rather than in the case of a 

 few trees. In such an instance as that of the apple orchard 

 mentidned above, spraying seems to be the most advisable rem- 



