50 
looking larvae in P. americana in the woods, to the number of plums 
stung than I have in any other plum, a not very careful survey of this 
tree showed that about one in twenty-five of the eggs laid in the fruit 
has produced well-grown, healthy looking larvae). I selected first 100 
plums of the Wild Goose variety, in which eggs had seemingly been 
laid. (I am well aware that in many species of insect life the females 
will continue to form proper nidi for the reception of her eggs long 
after her supply of eggs has become completely exhausted; in fact, 
as a rule the a griin messenger” finds her busily at work, with feeble 
effort, trying to lay eggs and reproduce her kind, and it is quite proba- 
ble that our u Little Turk” possesses this instinct, which continues to 
its fatal termination. Therefore my percentages are not so correct as 
if I had been able in each instance to locate an egg, in situ within the 
ovipositing mark.) At least the ovipositing mark was apparent on 
each fruit. These were placed in a vessel, and taken out one at a 
time and cut under the ovipositing mark to ascertain if the larvae 
had fed. If it had not fed noticeably, it was thrown aside and another 
taken up, and so on until I had obtained a hundred plums in which 
the egg had hatched and the larvae had fed. Two trials of Wild Goose 
plums, in this way, gave respectively 22 and 23 living, sickly look- 
ing, attenuated larvae. Two trials of the same number of Newman gave 
respectively 24 and 26 of the same kind of grubs. Whether auy one 
of these sickly looking larvae would have matured into beetles I do 
not know, but I have the best of reasons for believing that none of 
them would. And here are my reasons, and they are of the greatest 
value, if I have made no mistakes. The autumns of 1884 and 1885 I 
gathered the fallen fruit from all the trees for seed, and of course in this 
way I got all the fruit with living larvae in them, and when selecting 
what good fruit there was for market, all wormy and imperfect fruit 
was thrown on the surface of the ground in the shade of trees, day by 
day as gathered, and on and convenient thereto were placed several 
contrivances, such as the young beetles are known to seek as soon as 
they emerge from the ground for shelter. These shelters were care- 
fully examined until cold weather without finding a single beetle. 
The next spring this seed was gathered up early and planted. A good 
portion of the ground it had occupied was at once covered with strong 
canvas, with its edges so covered and fastened down that it was im- 
probable that the beetles could escape from under it.* Now, if this 80 
bushels of plums selected from the 264 bushels marketed on one season, 
and of course including practically all the wormy plums, bred no Curcu- 
lios, and it takes 3,200 eggs to produce one well-matured larva, and if we 
give it all the Native Plums it may require in which to lay all of its eggs, 
* This experiment was very poorly conducted and proves nothing. If the plums re- 
ferred to were wormy, it is safe to say that at least a portion of the larvm w r ere in 
healthy condition and went through their transformations under ground. We have 
