THE PEACH-TREE BORER. 



The Peach-tree Borer (Plate LX) is 

 Sanninoidea Hyi -^ outsidc my back door and J 



exitiosa .. t- i ' 1 - 



am not philosophical enough to enjoy its 



neighborliness. I have seen an estimate of $6,000,000 

 given for the annual damage done by it not all on my 

 lot, of course. This species ought to have stuck to wild 

 cherries and plums, which are believed to have been its 

 original food, although it also feeds on willow. The 

 afflicted trees display distress signals by exuding large 

 masses of gum where the larvae are working, which is 

 usually near the surface of the soil. The insect passes the 

 winter as a half-grown larva. After attaining its full 

 growth early the next season, the larva leaves its burrow 

 (usually) and makes its unkempt cocoon of excrement, 

 pieces of bark,"gum, and silk on the trunk of the tree or on 

 the earth. About a month later (which may be from 

 June, or earlier in the South, to September) the adults 

 appear. They have a wing expanse of an inch or more but 

 the sexes differ markedly in appearance. The female is 

 dark steel-blue (sometimes with a reddish glint) except 

 for the transparent hind wings and the orange band which 

 covers the fourth and, in the North, the fifth abdominal 

 segments. All the male's wings are transparent, with 

 blue edgings and blue crossbands like those of marginata; 

 the body is blue, banded with white or light yellow. 

 Each female lays from 200 to 800 eggs, about a fiftieth of 

 an inch long and much the color of the bark on which they 

 are placed. I have never seen them but, according to the 

 pictures, they are very pretty. I will admit that the 

 adults, also, are pretty. There is a generation every 

 year. This species does damage wherever peaches are 

 grown in this country, although it is an eastern species; 

 on the Pacific coast it is joined in the work of destruction 

 by San.iinoidea opalescens. 



We can blame this on Europe, but it is 



Synanthedon now wdl natur alized, having been here for 

 tipuliformis 



about a hundred generations. It also oc- 

 curs in Asia- and Australia. We would expect, from its 

 name, that it is very long-legged, like Tipulidae, but it is 

 not. Both sexes have both pairs of wings transparent 



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