PLUM INSECTS. The most notable of the insects which damage the plum in the United States is the plum eureulio (Conotrachelas now phar). a species which for many years has de stroyed almost the entire crop over large sec tions of the country. It. is a small, rough, gray ish or blackish beetle, about one-fifth of an inch long, with a black, shining hump on the middle of each wing case. The female lays her eggs in the young fruit shortly after they are formed, making with her long snout a small cut through the skin, running in the snout to a depth of about one-sixteenth of an inch. In this cavity the egg i; placed. She then cuts a erescent-shaped slit through the skin in front of the hole so as to undermine the egg and leave it in a flap, the ob ject being apparently to cause the piece around the egg to wilt and thus to prevent the grow ing fruit from crushing the egg. Tlw larva is a white. grub feeds upon the flesh of the fruit, for the most part about the stone. It reaches full growth in from three to live weeks. The fruit meantime has become dis eased, and has fallen prematurely to the ground. The hula leave, the fallen fruit, elite rt. the ground to a depth id from four to six inches, and transforms to pupa in an •-it Ethel: cell, issu ing in from three to six weeks in the adult condi tion. The insect is single-brooded and hibernates as au adult. The beet les emerge from hiberna tion when the trees are about to feed for some time by puncturing the twigs and hods, and lay their eggs in the fruit soon after it is formed. The best remedies consist in spraying
the I rees with an arsenical mixture during the feeding-time of the beetles. and afterwards in jarring them. eausing the beetles to fall from the branches, when they are caught in cloth recepta cles and destroyed. This jarring method is car ried on with great success in sonic of the largest orchards in the country.
Very few other insects are tigecificallv eonneeted with the plum. The larva of one of the sphinx 'moths (Sphinx drupiferarum) feeds upon the foliage. and a number of other species are found more or less abundantly eating the leaves. None of then:, however, are sufficiently abun dant to cause marked damage. As mentioned under PEAen INSECTS, the peach-tree borer Mone t the trunks of plum trees. Another weevil occasionally damages the fruit, and this species, the 'plum gouger' (Coecotoras seutel la?.is), is especially almndant in parts of the West. it appears in the spring, alma the same time as the plum cumuli°, but, instead of cut ting a crescent-shaped flap. bores a round hole in the fruit like the puncture of a pin. The larva, instead of feeding around the stone of the fruit, works its way through the soft shell of the stone and feeds upon the kernel.
Consult Saunders, Insects Injurious to Fruits (Philadelphia. I SS9)