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In plants, the down on the fruit and the colour of the flesh are considered by botanists as characters of the most trifling importance; yet we hear from an excellent horticulturist, Downing, that in the United States smooth-skinned fruits suffer far more from a beetle, a Curculio, than those with down; that purple plums suffer far more from a certain disease than yellow plums; whereas another disease attacks yellow-fleshed peaches far more than those with other coloured flesh.

Hull, of Alton, Ill., for the purpose of jarring off and catching the curculio from trees infested by this destructive insect. It is a barrow, with arms and braces covered with cloth, and having on one side a slot, which admits the stem of the tree. The curculio catcher, or machine, is run against the tree three or four times, with sufficient force to impart a jarring motion to all its parts.

'Venus is ungrateful to me, said Glaucus, gaily; 'I have always sacrificed on her altar. 'He who plays with Clodius, whispered Lepidus, 'will soon, like Plautus's Curculio, put his pallium for the stakes. 'Poor Glaucus! he is as blind as Fortune herself, replied Sallust, in the same tone. 'I will play no more, said Glaucus; 'I have lost thirty sestertia. 'I am sorry... began Clodius.

In their train come the procuresses, sometimes of the most vulgar sort, such as one who appears in the -Curculio-, sometimes duennas like Goethe's old Barbara, such as Scapha in the -Mostettaria-; and there is no lack of brothers and comrades ready with their help.

To destroy fruit is to take money out of the farmer's pocket, and to attack and injure the tree is like undermining his house itself. By an annual expenditure of about $8,250,000 in cash for spraying apple trees, the destructiveness of the codling moth and curculio have been greatly reduced, but that money is itself a cash loss.

The gray curculio walks with snout erect, snuffing the morning air; and here we fall upon a party of apprentice pill-beetles, learning to make up stercoraceous boluses, and forming nearly as long a line as the shopmen who are similarly engaged behind Holloway's counter in the Strand.

This ceremony the Greeks called moving εϗ δεξια εν δεξια, from the right to the right, which was the direction of the motion, and the Romans applied to it the term dextrovorsum, or dextrorsum, which signifies the same thing. Thus Plautus makes Palinurus, a character in his comedy of "Curculio," say, "If you would do reverence to the gods, you must turn to the right hand."

Every year we see these trees white with blossoms, and as regularly every specimen of the fruit bearing the plague-spot a tiny crescent-shaped wound in the cuticle withering, fading and falling. We painfully gather up this fallen fruit by the bushel, burn it to destroy the grub of the curculio, and, hoping against hope, witness the same disaster the following year.

The plum bears heavily and constantly north of Sacramento, and does not suffer from the curculio, and the dried fruit is delicious and wholesome. Some day the farmers who are now experimenting with figs will, I do not doubt, produce also a marketable dried fig in large quantities.

The only exceptions are, congratulations on the course of the war or on the peaceful times; general sallies directed against usurious dealings in grain or money, against extravagance, against bribery by candidates, against the too frequent triumphs, against those who made a trade of collecting forfeited fines, against farmers of the revenue distraining for payment, against the dear prices of the oil-dealers; and once in the -Curculio- a more lengthened diatribe as to the doings in the Roman market, reminding us of the -parabases- of the older Attic comedy, and but little likely to cause offence But even in the midst of such patriotic endeavours, which from a police point of view were entirely in order, the poet interrupts himself;