72 
FIRST ANNUAL REPORT OF THE 
all through the trees. It did no good whatever. 1 often caught the little rascal work¬ 
ing over and all around the plums, close to the cobs. They paid it no attention, though 
you could smell it for rods. A neighbor tried it with utter failure. It is a humbug.” — 
L. S. id, Rolling Prairie , Wis., in Western Rural , Dec. 7, 1867. 
Curculio and Coal-tar. — “Having read a statement some time since, that corn¬ 
cobs saturated with coal-tar, and suspended from the branches of plum-trees, would 
keep the little Turk away from the plums, I resolved to try the experiment. I pro¬ 
cured a keg of coal-tar and a quantity of cobs, and, after tying a string around each, put 
them into the tar, and repaired to a favorite plum-tree, prepared to carry the war 
directly into the enemy’s dominions. I first spread sheets under the tree, hammered 
and shook the rascals out, and gave them the most affectionate treatment. Then, after 
much tribulation, arising from the fact that the vile stuff would keep dripping from the 
cobs, and would get upon the strings, reducing my hands and person to much the con¬ 
dition of the cobs, I got them suspended ; I mean the cobs, not the hands or the person. 
I also tied a newspaper loosely around the body of the tree, and smeared it also with 
tar; then set the keg at the foot of the tree, to heighten as far as possible the effect of 
the performance, and retired from the field, feeling in several respects as though I had 
been and done it. After some hours I concluded to again visit the scene of operations, 
and found the whole region suggestive to the olfactories of as vile an odor as it was ever 
the lot of man to inhale. While noticing the artistic effect of the dripping tar upon the 
leaves and fruit, I observed a queer-looking gray excrescence upon one of the half- 
grown plums. A nearer view revealed the appalling fact that it was a Curculio ‘ peg¬ 
ging away ’ at his favorite pursuit, as much at home in the vile atmosphere around him, 
as if it were the spicy breezes wafted from ‘ Araby the Blest.’ Need I say that I left the 
scene in disgust, feeling that coal-tar as a remedy against Curculios was a failure.” — 
Geo. W. Campbell , Delaware, Ohio , in American Journal Horticulture , August, 1867. 
CHAPTER XII. — The Plum Gouger. ( Anthonomus prunicida, Walsh.) 
I have but little to add to what I stated respecting this insect in the Practical Ento¬ 
mologist; (Vol. II. pp. 79 — 80); and I may say likewise, that I have but very little to 
correct or modify in that article. 
These insects take wing quite readily, almost as readily indeed as a Tiger-beetle 
(Cicindela) ; so that even in my office, where the sun was not shining, on removing some 
of them out of a bottle, in order to bring a lens to bear on them to watch their opera¬ 
tions as they were sitting on a plum, they would generally open their wing-cases almost 
immediately, and fly off a short distance. In this respect they differ very remarkably 
from the Plum Curculio, which is a shy flier. 
The mode in which the Plum Gouger deposits her egg in the plum, differs radically 
from that adopted by the Plum Curculio and explained in the preceding chapter. With 
the minute but powerful jaws placed at the tip of her long and slender snout, the snout 
itself being held at right angles to the surface on which she stands, she first of all eats 
through the skin of the plum to a short depth, so as to form a shallow cylindrical hole 
of precisely the same diameter as her snout, and directed perpendicularly downwards. 
She then alters from time to time the position of her snout, sloping it first in one direc 
tion, and then in another, and then in another still, and all the while working away 
with her jaws at the flesh of the fruit. By this means she gradually gouges out a 
gourd-shaped hole, bellying inside and quite small outside, till she has made an open¬ 
ing about four-fifths as deep as her snout is long. The excavated matter is not thrown 
