Weevil

or Curculio, a comprehensive name for numerous beetles with their grubs destructive of fruit and grain. Some weevils roll up the leaves of trees, depositing eggs in the roll, but the curculios or weevils dreaded by the fruit grower are beetles with long snouts, even twice the length of the body, with which they first puncture young fruit. Then, after depositing an egg in the hole, the snout is used again to push the egg to the bottom of the orifice. As the fruit grows, the egg hatches out into a grub and the grub grows with the fruit. Some kinds are content to cut a path out through the young fruit and drop to the ground. Here they form pockets and remain until they are ready to come up as beetles. The stung fruit may mature and usually does so, but it is gnarly. Other grubs cause the fruit to fall. They leave it for the ground or remain within for a time and come out beetles. The adage, "every rose has its thorn," may be changed to "every fruit has its weevil." Acorns, chestnuts, hazelnuts, rosehips, apples, pears, plums, apricots, cherries, strawberries, grapes, rice, sugarcane, corn, peas, pine cones, cotton bolls, bread, biscuit,--each has its peculiar weevil, a condition expressed by the popular term of "wormy." The article on SPRAYING gives some idea of the pains taken by fruitgrowers to spread poison for adult weevils, and to poison the hearts of the blossoms for the destruction of the grubs as they hatch. Another plan is that of catching the adult beetles at the season when they infest fruit trees to lay eggs. They may be shaken off on a large canvas and burned. The canvas may be stretched on a frame with a slit at one side for the admission of the trunk of the tree. The frame is carried on a sort of wheelbarrow readily wheeled from tree to tree. See Cotton Boll-Weevil