156 THE PLUM CUECULIO. 
under trees on pans of charcoal; soft soap placed in crotches of 
limbs; burning soot under trees; paving the earth under trees with 
brick, slate, mortar, etc.; branches of tansy hung in trees; burning 
under trees woollen rags saturated with brimstone; destroying the 
eggs in the fruit by means of a needle-like instrument; passing 
around the trees a blazing straw torch, into which the beetles 
would fly; protecting the fruit with mosquito netting; confining 
in the orchard pigs, geese, poultry, etc.; fencing out the curculio 
with a high, 9-foot fence; fall plowing; liberal use of salt around 
the trees; removal of surface of soil and contained insects from around 
base of trees; covering soil with salt during midsummer to kill 
worms escaping from the fruit; picking up and destroying stung 
fruit; dilute sulphuric acid thrown on the soil to destroy insects in 
ground ; bruising the tree to cause exudation of gum to prevent its 
development on the fruit upon which the larvae feed; removal and 
destruction of black-knot disease; flooding the soil to drown insects; 
placing quicksilver in holes bored in trunk of trees; corrosive subli- 
mate thrown into the soil to destroy the insects in the ground; jarring 
insects onto sheets held or placed under trees; asafoetida spray; 
whale-oil soap, sulphur, lime-and-tobacco spray; coal-tar and water 
spray; piles of small stones around trees; trapping curculio under 
chips, small boards, etc., placed on the ground under the trees; 
planting of nectarines as a trap crop; light traps; belts of cotton 
batting around the trees; lead-pipe troughs around the trees filled 
with oil; hanging in trees bottles of sweetened water as a bait. 
The first remedial suggestions which we have seen are those in 
Darlington's Memorial, giving the correspondence between the early 
American botanist, John Bartram, and his patron, Peter Collinson. 
Under date of March 14, 1736-37, Peter Collinson, writing to John 
Bartram, refers 1 to the — 
very particular account how your plums are destroyed by an insect. Pray change 
the stock, and graft plums and nectarines on peach stocks, which being a vigorous, 
free stock, and not liable to these insects, may succeed better. Pray try; I have a 
great opinion of its succeeding. 
That the above referred to the plum curculio is evident from a 
later communication. John Bartram, writing under date of April 
16, 1746, and speaking of the strawberry and sloe, the last of "which 
we have had in the country these 50 years. I plant them about my 
hedges, where it grows to a large size. The blossoms are prodigious 
full, but never one ripe fruit. They were bit by the insect, as all our 
stone fruit is ; but the peaches, and some kinds of cherries, overgrow 
them." 2 In a letter under date of April 24, 1746, Peter Collinson, 
in writing to John Bartram, adds: 
To prevent the destruction of the beetle, I confess, is not so easy as some other bad 
effects; yet as we know the duration of this insect is but short, if while he is so noxious, 
i Darlington's Memorial, p. 93. 2 Darlington's Memorial, p. 175. 
