54 



Plums are not largely grown in this vicinity, but at several places in the woods 

 where trees are growing wild (in abandoned clearings, etc.), I have found this beetle, and 

 in such places it is left to increase unmolested, and is secured against extermination. 



The plum weevil has been accused of causing the disease on trees, known as "black 

 knot,'' but although the grubs are sometimes found in these excresen- 

 ces, they are not the cause of the injury, but only an accidental result 

 of it, the beetle having been deceived into depositing its eggs in the 

 swelling part when green and soft. Farther south, where the beetle 

 is double-brooded, it has been said to deposit its eggs in the bark of 

 young pear limbs, the grubs which winter therein accounting for the 

 spring brood. The plum-gouger, Anthonomus prunicidae (fig. 37), is also 

 destructive to plums. 



There are other species of this genus found in Canada, but none 

 are so notorious. 



Tyloderma fragarice is a small weevil that 

 attacks the strawberry, and is known as the 

 destroys the embryo fruit stalks and leaves in 

 the crown of the plant. (See fig. 38, where the 

 larva and beetle are both shown. ) An insect with 

 such a disposition may readily become a serious 

 enemy to small-fruit growers. 



Mononychus vulpeculus is a robust beetle 

 slightly larger than the pea weevil, but differing 

 from it in shape. The body is about as wide as 

 very thick ; the thorax is much nar- 



(across the line if 

 " strawberry-crown 



not in this country) 

 borer," because it 



long and 



rower, while the head is small and the snout long 



I 



Fig. 38. 



and fine. The beetle is black above, and of a rusty yellow beneath. The grub lives in 

 the pods of the common flag, or iris, eating through two or three seeds (which it leaves 

 mere rings) and forming a cell in which it undergoes its changes. They are often very 

 plentiful and scarcely a pod escapes, but, of course, the greater part of the seeds in 

 the pod are uninjured. On the first of August last, in passing through a field of 

 these plants, I noticed that some pods had an appearance of some internal disease, and on 

 investigation found the source of trouble to be a small white grub, evidently a curculio 

 larva. Aware that a weevil did infest these plants, and not having hitherto bred any 

 specimens, I carried away a pocketful qf pods for the purpose of so doing. These were 

 placed in a small box, and not looked at again until the 19th of September, when on 

 emptying the box I found nine specimens of M. vulpeculus. There were also two small 

 moths and six ichneumon flies, four of the latter being females and two males. On open- 

 ing the pods I obtained nineteen more weevils and four ichneumons, as well as two larvae 

 of the moth. Hardly a pod was without a tenant, while in some dwelt two or three. A 

 day or two later I visited the patch where I obtained the pods, and found that with few 

 exceptions the pods had burst and scattered their contents, but a few remained, and either 

 showed holes through which insects had escaped or still contained weevils or caterpillars. 

 The beetles probably spend the winter underground or concealed in the dead plants. 



As shown by the figures above given, fully twenty-five per cent, of the insects were 

 destroyed by the ichneumons. In the same 

 way the plum weevil has been greatly check- 

 ed in some places by an ichneumon fly 

 called Sigalphus curculionis (fig. 39), which 

 is very similar in size and appearance to 

 the ichneumon just mentioned as parasitic 

 on the iris-weevil. 



A weevil remarkable for its long slen- 

 der rostrum or snout is found upon hazel- 

 bushes in May, and more abundantly in 

 June, about the middle of which month the 

 beetles are frequently seen paired. It is 



