an Insect destructive to Oranges. 47M 



cause of the decay in oranges, and if I did not thank this gentleman, as 

 well as Mr. Adams of Thames Street, for the valuable information on the 

 subject, which their profession lias enabled them to give me. 



In the third volume of M. Cuvier's R^gne Animal, page 647, M. 

 Latreille makes the following remark under the head of Tephritis, 

 " Les Colons de I'Isle de France ne peuvent presque pas, d'apres des 

 " observations que m'a communiquees M. Cattoire, obtenir des Citrons 

 " sains et en parfaite maturite a raison de I'extrfeme multiplicite d'un dip- 

 " t^re du meme sousgenre qui y depose ses oeufs." To the kindness 

 of M. Cattoire who was formerly Paymaster of the French forces in the 

 Mauritius, I hold myself indebted for a female specimen of this insect, 

 which he says attacks the oranges and not the limes; but as the note 

 which he gave me affixed to the insect differs still more materially from 

 the above statement of M. Latreille I cannot do better than to copy it 

 verbatim. " Cet Insecte depose sa larve dans I'ovaire de lafleur d'Oran- 

 " ger, et en detruit le fruit." I shall shew at some future opportunity, 

 how little difference exists between this insect from the Mauritius, and 

 that which attacks the oranges of St. Michael. In the mean while I 

 shall merely observe, that the above few words of M. Cattoire, the only 

 observer as yet of the insect's economy on the spot, are evidently hastily 

 expressed, and do not coincide with the above information, which M. La- 

 treille professes to have derived from him. And indeed it is almost 

 impossible to believe on examining a decayed orange from St. Michael's 

 that the parent fly deposited its egg in the flower, and not in the fruit, as 

 the original puncture of its ovipositor remains visible in the centre of the 

 soft part of the rind, and is the invariable proof of a maggot being the 

 cause of the decay of the orange. In weighing therefore the degrees of 

 credit for accuracy which ought to be attached to these conflicting state- 

 ments, namely, that of M. Cattoire to me, and that of M. Latreille, as 

 given on M. Cattoire' s authority, I am inclined to agree with the former, 

 that the fruit attacked in the Mauritius is the orange and not the lime, 

 because the insect is scarcely more than a variety of the St. Michael 

 species; and I am induced to place confidence in M. Latreille' s statement, 

 that the parent insect deposits its egg in the fruit, because in like manner 

 this is obvious from the appearance of the infected St. Michael oranges 



