Spraying for the Curculio. 69 



in the newspapers." 1 The use of the remedy by J. Luther 

 Bowers, of Herndon, Va., in 1880, and by William Creed, of 

 Rochester, N.Y., in 1884, is also mentioned. In this report 

 the statement is made, on page 70, that " Riley, in an address 

 delivered before the Mississippi Valley Horticultural Society, 

 in the early spring of 1885, at New Orleans, in giving his 

 experience as to the feeding habits of the beetle, urged experi- 

 mentation with the arsenicals in this direction as promising 

 fair results," but I have been unable to find such an expression 

 in the record of the above meeting. In 1885, Forbes, of 

 Illinois, applied Paris green for the control of the codlin-moth, 

 and at the same time noted the severity of injuries caused by 

 the curculio upon the apples. These experiments are reported 

 by Howard, 2 and in one of the conclusions he says : " Treat- 

 ment with Paris green had saved something more than two- 

 thirds of the apples which would otherwise have been damaged 

 by the codliu-moth, and something more than one-half of 

 those which would have been sacrificed to the curculio." 



In 1887 the arsenites appear to have been tested for the first 

 time in the destruction of the plum curculio by an investigator 

 of recognized ability. Cook made some experiments which did 

 not, however, form a very firm basis for the drawing of con- 

 clusions. Four plum trees were thoroughly sprayed with Paris 

 green on May 18, the poison being used at the rate of one 

 tablespoonful to six gallons of water. Unfortunately no trees 

 of any of the varieties sprayed appear to have been left for 

 comparison, and the fruit of different trees was injured by the 

 insect to a very unequal extent. The two Wild Goose trees 

 dropped all their fruit. A yellow variety was loaded with fruit 

 of which only 15 per cent was affected while the fourth tree, 

 a purple variety, "had not less than 75 per cent of its fruit 

 badly stung." 8 



During the same year, W. B. Alwood carried on some limited 

 experiments at the Ohio experiment station for the destruction 

 of the plum curculio, using a Paris green spray. His conclusion 

 was : " I am confident the curculios eat enough to make it pos- 



* Ann. Rept. U. S. Com. of Agric. 1888, 69. * Ibid. 1887, 105. 



8 Rept. Mich. Bd. Agric. 18S7, 40. See also Ibid. 18S6, 141, where the same 

 writer expresses little hopes for the success of the arseiiites in the destruction of 

 the plum curculio ; and Saunders in Rept. Fruit Growers' Ass'n of Ont. 1887, 58. 



