ACTING STATE ENTOMOLOGIST. 
67 
tlie same crescent-cut in the green shuck of that fruit, as does the Plum Curculio in the 
flesh of the Plum. 
In the Paper already referred to I gave my reasons for the belief, that the Curculio 
passed the winter in the perfect state. Mr. Holcomb, of Cobden, South Illinois, has 
since assured me, that he also has found'the insect under the bark of his trees in the 
winter. Still, it was difficult to believe, that beetles coming out in the middle of July 
could live all through the winter, and until the middle of the following June, so as to 
be able to sting the plums at that period. This difficulty is now, I think, almost en¬ 
tirely done away with. I find that there are two distinct broods of the Plum Curculio 
every year, the first of which comes out in the beetle state, in the latitude of Rock 
Island, from about July 19th to August 4th, and the second from about August 23d to 
September 28th. The first brood of beetles, which is generated by females that have 
passed the winter in the beetle state, and have attacked the early fruit, lays in the more 
matured fruit the eggs from which proceed the second brood. The second brood of 
beetles comes out late in the same season, and the females, at all events, if not the 
males, live through the winter, and repeat in the succeeding season the process detailed 
above. Thus, as will be seen at once, the Curculio differs from the Apple-worm or 
Codling Moth (Carpocapsa pomonella, Linnaeus), which, as has been already shown, is also 
double-brooded, in this, that the former passes the winter in the perfect state, and the 
latter in the larva and pupa states. 
After I had made the above discovery; but before I had announced it to any one, Mr. 
Holcomb, of South Illinois, at the meeting of the American Pomological Society at 
St. Louis, Sept. 12th, 1867, in opposition to the contrary opinion of Dr. Trimble, the 
State Entomologist of New Jersey, asserted his belief that in his neighborhood there 
were two distinct broods of Curculio. And for this belief he gave as a reason, that, in 
jarring his trees for Curculios, he had observed that there was a particular period in the 
middle of the summer, during which no Curculios, or, at all events, but very few, were 
to be met with, while both before and after this period they swarmed. I found, in 
November, 1867, that many of the other fruit-growers near Cobden, and perhaps all 
of them, agreed with Mr. Holcomb upon this matter. I also remark in the Prairie 
Farmer for July 27th, 1867, (p. 55,) the following from Cobden, signed by “ V,” and 
evidently written shortly after July 20th, 1867. “ There were scarcely any Curculios 
to be found before the recent rains, since which time they have been coming out of the 
ground in numbers, and when caught their wing-cases are usually quite fresh and soft 
— a fact which proves that there are exceptions to the r rule that this insect is one- 
brooded ; for, while it may invariably be so in the North, it is more frequently two- 
brooded in this region.” 
Still, it must be evident that all these facts , are perfectly consistent with my old 
hypothesis, namely, that the Curculio is only one-brooded, and that those that come 
out of the ground with soft wing-cases in July, live through the winter and are the 
same individuals that sting the plums in the June of the following year, shortly after 
which they die, and a more or less brief interval ensues before the July brood makes 
its appearance. 
Inasmuch as my bare assertion, that there are annually two distinct broods of Curcu¬ 
lios, would very probably be disbelieved or disputed by authors, who have hitherto 
held the contrary doctrine, it maybe as well — at the risk of being tedious — to give 
the details of the experiments upon which my conclusions were based. Those who 
have no taste for such dry things as facts and figures, can skip the two following para¬ 
graphs. 
