162 On the Culture of the Plum. 



Yellow fruited. Green fruited. 



Washington, Green Gage, 



Coe's Golden drop, Imperial do. 



Drap d'or, Flushing do. 



Yellow Gage, Luscomb's Nonsuch. 



Blue or Purple fruited. 



Reine Claude Violette, or Purple Gage, 



Blue Imperiatrice, Nectarine, 



Kirk's, Red Gage. 

 Imperial Diadem, 



The Reine Claude Violette, or purple gage, is one of the most 

 delicious of plums. The Blue Imperiatrice is excellent, and keeps 

 a long time after ripening. Coe's Golden drop and the Wash- 

 ington are very large and luscious fruit; and the Nectarine and 

 Kirk's plum, are very beautiful, of large size, and fine flavored. 

 The Azure Hative may, in addition to the above, be recommen- 

 ded as a very early variety, and the White Magnum Bonum, oregg 

 plum, as being suitable for preserving. 



Diseases of the Plum. The plum tree is subject in this coun- 

 try, in many districts, to the attacks of two or three insects which 

 commit great havoc in their respective methods, and which, owing 

 to the culpable ignorance or negligence of cultivators, are permit- 

 ted to increase and disseminate themselves, ad libitum. The first 

 and most troublesome of these visitors, is the Curculio nenuphar of 

 Herbot.* It is a small winged insect, scarcely a fourth of an inch 

 in length, furnished with a sharp rostrum or bill, with which it pier- 

 ces the embryo fruit as soon as it is formed in the expanded blos- 

 som. Though the insect itself is too inconspicuous to attract the 

 eye of a careless observer, amidst the countless myriads of epheme- 

 ral winged creations of a spring day, yet the watchful horticul- 

 turist may discover it in great numbers flitting about in the trees, 

 while yet laden with blossoms, and puncturing the newly formed 

 fruit to deposit the egg which is to continue its race. These punc- 

 tures may first be discovered when the fruit begins to swell, and 

 when it has attained half or a fourth of its size ; they are very dis- 

 tinct to the eye, remaining in the form of a crescent-shaped scar, 

 upon the surface of the green fruit. The egg in the mean time 

 hatches, and the larvae silently works its way towards the stem of 

 the fruit, which, as soon as it has reached that point, falls from the 

 tree. The whole crop is in many cases, where the careless culti- 

 vator has suffered the annual increase of the curculio, drops in this 

 manner prematurely from the tree, to the great mortification and 

 astonishment of those persons unfamiliar with the habits of the in- 

 sect race, who can see no cause of such a destruction of fruit. 

 When the fruit has fallen to the ground, the grub or larvae, obey- 

 ing the instinct of nature, after a short time, leaves the now use- 



* RynchcE-nvs cerasi Peck. 



