The Cherry Fruit-Fly. 31 



of such a pest from Belmont, Mass., which is only a few miles from 

 where Dr. Hagen found cherry maggots in 1883. 



In 1889, specimens of cherries and plums badly infested with 

 maggots were received at the Michigan Experiment Station from 

 northern Michigan. Brief notices of this infestation were soon 

 published (see bibliography) by Cook, Cordley and Davis. Cordley 

 stated that "from the- accounts of our correspondents describing the 

 attack, and from a close examination of both the larva and pupal 

 stages of the insects received, the cherries and plums seem to be badly 

 infested with Trypeta poinonella (the apple maggot). Whether 

 these are the descendants of small Trypetas which had formerly 

 acquired a taste for apples, or whetlier certain individuals of tliose 

 feeding upon tlie hawthorn have ' dropped their plebeian tastes and 

 adopted a more refined table regimen,' it is unsafe to say, but from 

 tlie fact that the apple maggot has never been known to attack the 

 apple of northern Michigan, and from the fact that while the apple 

 maggot is abundant on hawthorn everywhere in Michigan, and as it 

 has not attacked tlie cherries nor plums elsewhere, it seems probable 

 that a cherry and plum loving race of the apple maggot has devel- 

 oped or is being developed in northern Michigan, directly from 

 those which fed upon the hawthorn." Unfortunately none of the 

 adult insects seem to have been bred, and we are informed that 

 even none of the maggots are to be found in the Michigan College 

 collection. 



Some of the Geneva cherry growers noticed a few maggots in 

 their cherries last year, and we are informed that they have been 

 seen at Ithaca for a year or more, while our afflicted correspondent at 

 Belmont, Mass., reports that they think their fruit has been infested 

 for the last four or five years, but not nearly so bad as this year. 



While there seems to be no evidence extant to ever enable one 

 to determine just what insect is responsible for these two earlier 

 records of maggots in cherries, yet we think the cherry maggots we 

 received this year are the same as tliose previously recorded. And 

 we furthermore seriously doubt if this new cherry pest is the same 

 as the common apple maggot {Rhagoletis jpomonella) in spite of the 

 fact that we, like Cordley, have been unable to distinguish between 

 the maggots found in cherries and those working in apple. 



