130 



THE AMERICAN ENTOMOLOGIST. 



THE PLUM CUKCULIO. 



[Conotraclielus nenuphar, Ilerbst.) 



A TAPER READ EY THE EDITOR HEFOKE THE ILLIXOI« STATE 



IIORTICULTURAI, SOCIETY AT ITS FOURTEENTH 



ANNUAL 3IEETING. 



[Fig. 02.] 



Colors— (a and !i) whitish; (c) brown, Ijlaclc ami clay-yellow. 



Ladies and Gentlemen: You have invited 

 me to read an essay on the Plum Curculio. I 

 accepted the invitation with the intention of 

 preparing an exhaustive paper on the subject. 

 But the sudden death of my esteemed associate 

 and your State Entomologist, the late Benj. D. 

 Walsh, so completely upset my ai-rangements, 

 and so increased my labors, that I have found 

 time, only to substitute instead the following 

 hasty notes. 



So much has been written on the habits of 

 this one little insect, and on the best means of 

 protecting our fruits from its injurious work, 

 that one almost tires of repeating those estab- 

 lished facts in its history which, at tirst thought, 

 it strikes one that all interested should know. 

 But this is a bustling, shifting, progressive 

 world, and there are yet some mooted points to 

 be settled in the natural history of our Curculio. 



"When an experienced man is taken from our 

 midst, the fund of wisdom and the store of 

 knowledge which he had accumulated during a 

 long and busy life-time, are in a great measure 

 buried with liim. His younger followers profit 

 as much as they can by his recorded experience, 

 but they must necessarily go over the same 

 ground which he had been over before. Facts 

 in Nature will consequently have to be repeated 

 for all time to come ; but it should be our object 

 to reach beyond the facts already known, to 

 obtain a knowledge of all things as far as the 

 mind is capable of, and to delve still more deeply 

 into hidden truths, so that by observation and 

 perseverance, we may be enabled to read aright 

 the yet unread parts of that great recorded book, 

 which was printed, paged, collated and bound 

 by the fingers oi Omnipotence ! Besides, there 

 are actually many fruit-growers who do not 

 know a Curculio when they see one. Thus three 



different correspondents have, during the past 

 summer, requested a description of the little 

 pest, because, as they contended, they were not 

 acquainted with i(s appearance. And yet one 

 of these gentlemen, as I afterwards ascertained 

 from personal observation, was, at the very 

 time when he penned his question, su£Fering 

 from injuries caused by the " Little Turk." 



In this brief paper on the Curculio I shall, 

 therefore, necessarily have to repeat many of 

 the facts which were published in your own 

 Transactions for 1867, and of those which may 

 be found in the First Annual Eeport on the En- 

 tomology of Missouri. 



Estaljlished Facts in the History of the Curcnlio. 



In order to lay this question before you in the 

 very clearest light, it will be best to divide this 

 j)aper into two different parts. In the firstpart 

 we will give only those facts which arc estab- 

 lished beyond all peradventure ; and in the 

 second part, we will consider only those points 

 upon which opinions differ. 



The Plum Curculio, commonly known all 

 over the country as THE Curculio, is a small, 

 roughened, warty, brownish beetle, belonging 

 to a very extensive family known as Snout- 

 beetles (CuRCULiONiDyii) . It measures about 

 one-fifth of an inch in length, exclusive of the 

 snout, and may be distinguished from all other 

 North American Snout-beetles by having an 

 elongate, knife-edged hump, resembling apiece 

 of black sealing-wax, on the middle of each 

 wing-case, behind which humps there is abroad 

 clay-yellow band, with more or less white in 

 its middle. For the benefit of those who are 

 either fortunate or unfortunate enough not to 

 be acquainted with the gentleman, I have pre- 

 pared the above side sketch, whicli will give 

 at a glance its true form, and obviate the neces- 

 sity of further description and waste of time. 

 (Fig. 92, c.) 



This is the perfect or imago form of the Cur- 

 culio ; and it is in this hard, .shelly, beetle state, 

 that the female passes the winter, sheltering 

 under the shingles of houses, under the old 

 bark of both forest and fruit trees, under logs 

 and in rubbish of all kinds. As spring ap- 

 proaches, it awakens from its lethargy, and, if 

 it has slept in the forest, instinctively searches 

 for the nearest orchard. In Central Illinois and 

 in Central Missouri the beetles maj' be found 

 in the trees during the last half of April, but in 

 the extreme southern part of Illinois tliey ap- 

 pear about two weeks earlier, while in the 

 extreme northern part of the same State they 

 are fully two weeks later. Thus, in the single 



