A RASCALLY HUNCHBACK 209 
one, however; in from three to six weeks the full 
grown adult, a wicked, miserable little hunchback, 
emerges, and joins the summer loiterers, drifting 
about hither and yon until the fast-falling leaves 
warns it to seek a winter bed. They are a single 
brood species, hence these beetles, while they feed 
on both fruit and leaves, do not lay any eggs until 
the following spring. Then the females hurry 
from fruit to fruit, ripping recklessly here and 
there with their destructive little snouts, each one 
making and stocking anywhere from two hun¬ 
dred to five hundred crescent-guarded cradles. 
Sometimes several eggs are laid on large speci¬ 
mens, like the apricot, the peach and the plum. 
Every time you find a 4 worm ’ in any of the stone 
fruits, you may be pretty sure that it is the grub 
of the curculio. 
44 The apple curculio is the least common of 
this great band of dwarfs, and by far the most 
humped and disfigured. Her snout is as long as 
her body, and she chisels deeply, striving to put 
her egg as near the core as possible. When the 
grub hatches, it at once begins to excavate a tun¬ 
nel toward the heart of the apple, and if it suc¬ 
ceeds in reaching its goal, the fruit soon stops 
growing, shrinks and shrivels, and at length drops 
to the ground, allowing the full-grown larvae a 
chance to escape and pupate in its earthen cell, 
in the same manner as do the stone-fruit curculio. 
