. The American fruit culturist. n found that if swine areallowed to run in infested orchards, or where the trees aregrown in poultry yards, good crops are often secured. Several years ago it was discovered that the adult insectsdid considerable feeding both on the foliage and fruit of theirfood-plants. This led to extensive experiments in sprayingwith Paris green to kill the beetles, and the results were veryencouraging, especially on cherry trees. Many fruit-growersnow spray their trees two or three times, early in the seasonwhen the beetles are abroad, with Paris green or some similarpoison
. The American fruit culturist. n found that if swine areallowed to run in infested orchards, or where the trees aregrown in poultry yards, good crops are often secured. Several years ago it was discovered that the adult insectsdid considerable feeding both on the foliage and fruit of theirfood-plants. This led to extensive experiments in sprayingwith Paris green to kill the beetles, and the results were veryencouraging, especially on cherry trees. Many fruit-growersnow spray their trees two or three times, early in the seasonwhen the beetles are abroad, with Paris green or some similarpoison at the rate of one pound in one hundred and sixty ortwo hundred gallons of Bordeaux mixture or water, and theyare convinced of the effectiveness of the method so far as se-curing a profitable crop is concerned. Other extensive plum-growers claim that when the curculios are plentiful and thereis not an abundant setting of fruits they have been unable tosave the crop by spraying, and hence have discarded this DESTRUCTIVE Fig. 255.—Thomas Simple Curculio-catcher. method altogether. Theoretically the poison spray shouldkill many of the curculios, for there can be no question abouttheir feeding habits, as an^^ one can soon convince himself by confining several in a boxwith fresh fruits or who have beenfighting this pest foryears are satisfied that thejarring method is the onlyway to circumvent it. Ap-parently this inethod wasfirst proposed by DavidThomas, the father of theauthor of this volume. Ina communication to the Genesee Farmer, in 1832, he said: Not three days ago I saw that many of the plums were punc-tured, and began to suspect that shaking the tree was notsufficient. Under a tree in a remote part of a fruit-garden,having spread the sheets, I therefore made the following ex-periment : On shaking it well I caught five curculios; on Jar-ring it with the hand I caught twelve more; and on strikingthe tree with a stone, eight more dropped on the sheets. I
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