49 
destroyer of all fruit that falls before maturity ; and, further, it is a fact 
that the injury to the young fruit by this curculio when laying her eggs 
does not cause such fruit to fall while small, but the contrary is true. 
Therefore, when we find ail our young plums on the ground early in 
June, notice if every one of them shows the ovipositing mark of the 
Little Turk. She or her work was not the cause of their fall. But cut 
them open and you will invariably find the seed embryo dead, or the 
lice or bugs before mentioned had caused their death. 
Then it remains to give a short summary of the facts gathered, show- 
ing the true status of the Plum Curculio in regard to fruit growing 
generally and the Native Plums especially. 
The first and most important is that all evidence shows that this in- 
sect seeks the Native Plums in preference to all other fruits in which to 
deposit her eggs. This is a queer, a strange fact in biology, which nat- 
uralists will be inclined to dispute, namely, that an insect should seek 
and use, seemingly by preference, a fruit in which to lay her eggs 
wherein but very few of them will hatch and in which but few of such 
larvae as do hatch can be nourished on its substance to maturity. 
The reason why the Plum Curculio does seek the Native Plums to 
oviposit in seems to be because of their very early and very fragrant 
bloom. This beetle, unlike some others, is a ravenous feeder while in 
the imago or beetle state, and flies toward the nearest inviting food. 
With what result, now becomes the important question. I have shown 
that the depositing of the eggs of the Curculio in the young fruit does 
not cause it to fall before reaching maturity ; that it does not materially 
injure the fruit, for I have marketed a. Miner plum on which were eight- 
een of the ovipositing marks of this beetle, and yet it was a passable 
plum for use (eating or canning). But the facts are best given in figures 
and percentages. 
During the past two seasons I have gone over the great mass of native 
plums in bearing here twice during each season, or four times syste- 
matically, and very carefully, with practically the same results each 
time, and I will here give my results in figures. 
I found that for every egg that hatched and the larvae had fed notice- 
ably, that there were from 1,500 to 1,900 ovipositing marks of the Our- 
culio, and that only one living curculio maggot was found in 3,100 to 
3,500 plums examined and in which her eggs had been laid. These 
percentages are from /the June observations of these two years and 
coincide with previous observations. In the two observations made 
during the latter part of July and first of August the percentages were 
not materially changed or different. Another study was made to find 
out how many larvae that had hatched had fed to well advanced matu- 
rity as larvae. To get at this I selected the fruit of the Wild Goose and 
Newman, in which I had found more living larvae than in any other 
variety here (as yet I have not found any living larvae of considerable 
size in the Miner, but strangely I found more living, well fed, healthy 
22340— No. 14 4 
