160 THE PLUM CURCULIO. 
William Bartram, an eminent naturalist of Philadelphia, in a 
communication to the Philadelphia Society for Promoting Agricul- 
ture, for 1807, after a description of the curculio, goes on to say: 
During my travels from Pennsylvania to Florida I had sufficient opportunity to 
observe that the fruit trees on the sea coast and brackish water were free from the 
ravages of this destructive insect; this suggested to me an idea, that the saline vapors 
were pernicious to them, and thus I imagine that if we were to go to the trifling ex- 
pense of showering our choicest fruit trees with a weak solution of common sea salt, 
once or twice a week, it might answer the same end of preserving the fruit; and by per- 
severing further in a little more expense, in extending the same care to our orchards, 
we might in a few years expel them. But this is only a conjecture, having never made 
the experiment. 
In the beginning of the year 1808, he added the following note: 
The spring following I put the experiment on showering a plum tree on trial, with a 
weak solution of sea salt dissolved in water; but being too strong of salt, most of the 
leaves and fruit fell off on consequence of it, otherwise the experiment might have 
produced the desired effect, as what fruit remained was not touched by the insect, 
though small and disfigured by the strength of the brine; yet a few arrived to their 
natural size and ripened, so that I am induced to believe, that with care in tempering 
the solution, it will be found to be the best and cheapest remedy against the ravages 
and increase of those pernicious insects, yet discovered. It should be so weak as just 
to taste of salt. 
Joseph E. Muse, writing in the American Farmer, volume 1, No. 
16, page 124, under date of July 16, 1819, under the caption "Ento- 
mology/' treats among other insects, the curculio, as follows: 
Another insect, the curculio, of which there are nearly one hundred species, belong- 
ing also to the Coleopterous order, commands, from its universal ravages both upon the 
farmer and the fruiterer, the attention of every member of the community, who has it 
in his power to contribute, in the smallest measure, to the destruction of this ruthless 
foe to the wealth and luxury of man; which frustrates, by its concealed and wily move- 
ments, the most rational and well founded plans, executed by the most ardent and 
efficient energies of the human mind and body. Are we not inclined to exclaim, with 
the moral and philosophical Seneca, " Natura quam te colimus inviti quoque." How 
repugnant to the proud feelings of man to stoop to combat with this insignificant 
animalcule! How resistless are the ordinances of nature, which compel us, by acts 
so humiliating, to admire and adore that complex creation whereby the great architect 
has 6een fit to enforce them! 
I have made experiments on the larvae of several species of curculiones, and have 
found the parents so nearly similar in habitat, metamorphoses, and most other circum- 
stances, that one description will suffice for their whole history; at least of those which 
I have examined; and the only mark of idiocrasy in the tribes which I have observed, 
consists in their choice of a nidus; selecting, from their peculiarities in this respect 
alone, the cherry, the plum, or the grain of corn, as their instinctive or innate 
propensities might incline them. 
In a transparent bottle containing some earth, I deposited several cherries, in which 
were the larvae of the curculio, that infests that fruit; in a few weeks, or rather as soon 
as the pulp of the fruit was consumed, which was at different periods, they retreated 
into the earth where upon examination some time after, I found they had assumed the 
state of chrysalis, which shortly resulted in that of the imago or parent; the wings of 
the insect were not sufficient to accomplish the flight of the insect, but merely to assist 
