APPLE-BLOSSOM WEEVIL. 
11 
where the boughs of the trees were crowded, is well worth notice. 
Though this attack has not been brought forward before as causing 
mischief in this country, there is good reason to think that it has been 
present, and it would be well in the spring, towards the end of April, 
to w T atch for its appearance in its early stages, in order to counteract 
its effects and check its increase. 
Apple-blossom Weevil. Anihonomus pomorum , Curtis. 
1 and 2, Apple-bud pierced by weevil; 3, maggot; 4, pupa; 5, weevil; all magnified 
with figures showing nat. size. 
The Apple-blossom Weevil figured above, is a small long-snouted 
beetle, of a reddish brown colour, with various paler stripes and spots, 
and a pitchy-coloured patch on the wing-cases, with a pale stripe on 
it. The female beetle does much harm in some seasons, by boring a 
hole into the unopened flower buds of the Apple (and in a lesser degree 
of the Pear) with her proboscis, and laying one egg successively in 
unopened flower buds until her supply is exhausted. The maggots 
from these eggs feed each within its own flower bud, which therefore, 
instead of expanding, turns brown and dies, and the maggot presently 
changes, within the destroyed bud, to a chrysalis of the shape figured 
above and of some shade of ocliry colour, and thence to the perfect 
beetle. These are said to remain throughout the summer on the fruit 
trees, where they feed on the leaves. “ They are very shy and pre¬ 
cipitate themselves to the ground as soon as they are approached.”— 
(Schmidberger). 
This is one of the regular old standing orchard attacks, which 
appear more or less every year. In some years it is very injurious, 
the amount of mischief in some degree depending on the season, 
because the beetle does not lay after the flower bud has begun to open, 
so that in a warm sunny season when the buds form and open quickly 
the female beetle, whose laying operations are very slow, has them cut 
short before completion by the buds having ceased to be in a state for 
laying in. 
