600 
ANNUAL REPORT OF NEW YORK 
and remedies for its destruction, have appeared in our agricultural peri¬ 
odicals and other publications. You would hence think that everything 
relating to the habits and economy of this insect has been observed and 
made known to the public. This, however, is very far from being the case. 
Notwithstanding the volumes that have been written upon it, we do not to 
this day know where the Curculio lives and what it is doing, during three 
quarters of the year. All that is currently known respecting this insect is 
substantially as follows:—That it is a small grayish brown beetle, which 
makes its appearance on plum trees when the young fruit is about a third 
or half grown—cutting a curved or crescent-shaped slit upon the side of this 
fruit and dropping an egg into the wound—from which egg a small white 
worm hatches, which burrows in the fruit, causing it to wilt and fall from 
the tree—whereupon the worm crawls into the ground, to repose two or three 
weeks during its pupa state, when it comes out again, the latter part of 
July, a beetle like that which six weeks before laid its eggs in the fruit. 
What becomes of it from this time till the next June is wholly unknown. 
And that it breeds elsewhere than in the young fruit, though stated by 
some, is doubted and denied by others. 
My own observations lead me to believe that what is currently known 
and supposed to be the main and essential part of the history of this insect, 
is in reality but a small part of its history—a mere incidental act—an 
episode only, of its life and operations;—and if there was no young fruit 
whatever, this creature would continue in existence without being sensibly 
discommoded by the want thereof. I will therefore proceed to state the 
facts relating to this insect, so far as they are at present known to me, and 
the inferences to which these facts lead me. 
First, however, let us notice the insect itself. On taking one of them in 
hand and closely inspecting it, it is observed to lie perfectly still and mo¬ 
tionless as though it were dead, and is seen to be a small, hard, uneven or 
knobby beetle, shaped somewhat like a pear, its anterior part being nar¬ 
rower than the main part of its body. It varies greatly in its dimensions, 
some of the males or smallest individuals being but half as large as some 
of the females ; its medium size being somewhat less than a quarter of an 
inch in length. It is of a gray or rusty brown color, varied more or less 
in different specimens with spots of white, ochre yellow and black, in par¬ 
ticular, showing a shining black spot on the middle of its back with a white 
spot immediately back of it. Hanging down conspicuously from its for¬ 
ward end like the trunk of the elephant, is seen a slightly curved beak or 
bill, of the same length and thickness as the thighs of the legs. This beak 
is an appendage which belongs to all insects of the weevil kind, and distin¬ 
guishes them from all the other beetles or hard shelled insects. Being thus 
a true weevil this insect has often been termed the “ plum weevil,” and it is 
to be regretted that this has not become its current designation, it being so 
much more definite and expressive than the name “ curculio,” which is 
merely the Latin synonym of our English word weevil, and is hence applied 
in science as the family name of the whole group to which this species pertains. 
