SECRETARY'S PORTFOLIO. 375 



years since Dr. Harris first published his work on "Insects injurious to vege- 

 tation," and great is the debt of gratitude which we owe to him and succeed- 

 ing investigators who have given their lives to studying the habits of these 

 "little creeping things which be upon the earth," that they may teach us 

 how to destroy those which prey upon our lives, and so distinguish our friends 

 from our enemies. Every plant imported from abroad brings with it a new 

 insect or disease, and the dissemination of new plants and varieties, without 

 which there can be no progress in horticulture, inevitably disseminates their 

 insect enemies. On this subject the words of Edmund Burke are appropriate : 

 " The most vigilant superintendence, the most prompt activity, which has no 

 such day as to-morrow in its calendar, are necessary to the farmer," and we 

 may add, still more to the fruit-grower, and tenfold more necessary in com- 

 bating our insect enemies ; but as long as moral evil exists in the world, so 

 long may we expect there will be evil in the natural world, and he who is not 

 willing to contend against both is not worthy of the name either of cultivator 

 or of Christian. 



Marshall P. Wilder. 



MIGRATION OF THE CODLING MOTH. 



Mr. S. B. Peck, of Muskegon, who has contributed many valuable articles to 

 the reports of our society, thus discusses in the New York Sun on the codling 

 moth : 



The writer claims to have discovered, some six years ago, that the first 

 brood of this larva left the apple in which it was hatched as soon as the apple 

 became dead or ceased to grow, and entered a sound one, and so on, destroy- 

 ing ten to twenty-five apples. If this be true, as I shall herein attempt to 

 prove, it is plain that our most effectual warfare is to pick off from the tree all 

 the wormy apples as fast as they appear, and destroy them with their occu- 

 pants. 0. C. Chapin, an extensive apple grower of "Western New York, 

 although not admitting this emigration theory, admits that picking off the 

 infected fruit and destroying it has been his most effectual remedy. 



Presuming that every one who has watched the effects produced by this first 

 brood of larvae has noticed that the apples showing infection have ceased to 

 grow, and are under the size of sound ones, and that this discrepancy in size 

 increases from day to day till the apple drops, the plain inference appears to me 

 to be that this worm, which is said to "pass quickly to the heart of the fruit" 

 after hatching, thus destroys the vitality of the apple, and if so, how long will 

 this blasted apple afford nutriment to its voracious enemy? Most certainly not 

 for the thirty days which are said to be about the length of its larvahood. On 

 this head I quote from my records of 1875 to show the voracity and gluttony 

 of this pest. "July 14, placed a vigorous and full grown larva on a rhubarb 

 leaf, gave him a sound apple of 1£ inch diameter, and covered them from the 

 light. In twenty hours I found him inside, with the apple about as nearly 

 gutted as we ever find them." And while speaking of experiments, I will 

 state that myself and others have frequently placed the worms on solitary 

 sound apples, and invariably found them inside, and my neighbor says, " a 

 full grown worm does not take much time for it." I have several times placed 

 sound and unsound fruit in a box, and generally found, after a day or two, 

 some of the sound ones infected, but not always, for when we pick off wormy fruit 



