224: State Horticultural Society. 



an egg in there and then cutting a crescent shaped sHt, as it does in the 

 plum, (and we all recognize the work there) it simply makes a little 

 hole through the skin with its beak, deposits the egg beneath the peel and 

 cuts that crescent shaped flap through it. That is what threw entomolo- 

 gists off, and that is the reason we did not know what insect did 

 it. Hence the fact the insect was so hard to brand in the apples. 

 Not more than twenty-five per cent, of the eggs deposited in these 

 apples ever hatch at all, and not more than fifteen per cent, of those 

 that do hatch ever reach maturity. Now that reduces the injury they 

 can do to the apple to an enormous extent, and it is fortunate for us 

 that it does so. The insect hibernates during the winter ; it hibernates 

 under all kinds of rubbish. Using that term I include the mulch of all 

 kinds, stones and rubbish of all kinds near the orchard. The 

 next spring they come out and deposit their eggs in the apple 

 when the apple is about the size of a walnut, as a rule. The insects 

 take about six weeks to deposit their eggs, keeping it up right along 

 during that time; that has thrown entomologists, and especially 

 ffuit growers off their guard, thinking there was two broods a year, 

 the last brood doing the damage. As a matter of fact there is only 

 one brood, and it is the first brood that keeps up the depositing of the 

 eggs and causes the trouble in the fore part of August, and in some 

 cases up to the 15th of August. Soon after those insects have laid the 

 eggs, the larvae hatch. If it does not, that cut will heal up and leave a 

 scar, but no permanent rupture of the skin. It will heal up and leave a 

 space there that will remind you of an apple scab that has refused to go 

 any further. But the later punctures do not heal up. The result is at 

 picking time those punctures are through the skin, and then the bitter 

 rot starts to grow, and hence the rotting of the apples, and putting the 

 apples from the first down to the second grade. 



Suppose the egg hatches, which I say it rarely does, the insect then 

 works helter skelter through the pulp of the apple and presently 

 comes outside and drops to the ground, while the apple is still on the 

 tree. If the apple drops then it comes out of the apple any way. In 

 either case the creature enters the ground, sometimes six inches, makes 

 a pupa, remains in the pupa stage about three weeks, when the adult beetle 

 appears, and soon becomes hard and seeks a place to hibernate. Some of 

 the hardier ones stay in the ground over winter. 



Now as regards remedies. Bear in mind we know absolutely what 

 insect makes a sting. We know that it is not that so called stinging 

 insect. What are we going to do now for this creature? The moth 

 catcher has been advertsed very largely for that stinging insect prob- 

 lem, and I have always been saying that the insect advertised as the 



