HE VIEW. 
226 
find a good many snails eating his wall-fruits; or may, perchance, tread on two 
or three stag-beetles, while performing their evening perambulation along his 
gravelled walks; and then, he ‘knew it would be either a blight or a sneg, but 
it’s more of a sncg this year.’ Further than this, the Horticulturist has not pro¬ 
gressed :—webs and soft insects are. blights , snails and hard insects are snegs. 
Warm south-east winds produce the first, and cold north-east winds the last. 
Let us consider, separately, some of the insects which bear the name of blight. 
We will, in the first instance, examine the apple-tree which has many assailants: 
the principal are the weevil (Anthonomus pomorum,) the woolly louse or Ameri¬ 
can blight, and the moth. I will describe the first of these, and its mode of pro¬ 
ceeding. 
By carefully examining the bark of an apple-tree in winter, you will occasion¬ 
ally find a pretty little beetle in the crack-, which, directly on being touched, 
shams dead, and drops on the ground, where you will not, without great diffi¬ 
culty, discover it, on account of the great similarity of its colour; you must there¬ 
fore hunt till you find another. This time, as soon as you see him, place one 
hand below him, then touch him lightly with a little bit of stick, and he will 
drop into your open hand, his own scheme for self-preservation will beat him. 
Now roll him into a quill, or pill-box, and take him home. Place him on a 
sheet of writing paper; you will see his shape—the head is furnished with a 
trunk, from which, on each side, springs a feeler, bent at right-angles forward, so 
that the trunk altogether looks to be three pronged, like a trident. The thorax 
and wing cases are brown, beautifully mottled, and an oblique line on each, 
pointing towards the suture or meeting of the wing-cases, is much lighter co¬ 
loured, and gives the little beetle an appearance of having a letter V obscurely 
chalked on its back. Its size altogether is rather less than a hempseed. 
With the first sunshiny day, in March, these weevils leave their winter quar¬ 
ters, crawl up the trunk and along the twigs, perch themselves so as to receive 
the full benefit of the sun’s rays, and plume themselves with their legs and feet 
all over, trident and all, just in the same manner that a cat washes her face with 
her paw: they then stretch out their legs, lift up their wing cases, and unfold 
two large transparent wings, which though twice as long as the wing-cases, were 
neatly folded up and hidden under them, and then, launching themselves into 
the air, they go roving about the orchards and gardens, their little hearts in an 
ecstacy of freedom, and love, and happiness. It is not long before each finds a 
suitable mate; no relations raise objections; and the nuptials are consummated. 
By the time the female is ready for the important task of depositing her eggs, 
the spring has considerably advanced, the apple-buds have burst, and the little 
bunches of blossom are readily to be distinguished. The weevil soon finds out 
these, and selecting a blossom every way to her mind, commences her operations. 
The beak or trunk before alluded to, is furnished at its extremity with short 
teeth, or mandibles; with these, she gnaws a very minute hole into the calyx of 
the future blossom, and continues gnawing until her trunk is plunged in up to 
her eyes; the trunk is then withdrawn, and the hole examined with careful scru¬ 
tiny by the introduction of one of her feelers, or outer prongs of her trident. If 
it seem to require any alteration, the trunk goes to work again, and again the 
feelers ; at last, being fully satisfied that the work is well accomplished, she turns 
about, and standing with the extremity of her abdomen over the hole, thrusts 
into it her long ovi positor, and deposits a single egg in the centre of the future 
