The Codling Moth. 91 



It is said that Cato speaks of " wormy apples" in his treatise on Agri- 

 culture, written nearly two hundred years before the Christian era. In 

 the first century, A. D., both Columella and Pliny doubtless refer to this 

 insect in their writings. Pliny says : " The fruits themselves, indepen- 

 dently of the tree, are very much worm-eaten in some .years, the apple, 

 pear, medler, and pomegranate, for instance." While the apple-growers 

 of these ancient times were doubtless familiar with the work of this worm, 

 yet the real history of the insect itself apparently begins in 1635, or almost 

 with the beginning of purely entomological literature. A translation, with 

 a reproduction of the pictures, of this first quaint Dutch account is given in 

 figure 126. Nearly a century seems to have elapsed before we again find 

 the insect discussed by entomologists. In 1728, Frisch, a German writer, 

 gave us the first detailed descriptions of the insect ; his grotesque pictures 

 of the different stages are'reproduced in figure 126. Before the middle of 

 the 1 8th century, two other especially noteworthy accounts were published. 

 In 1736, Reaumur, a Frenchman, added some accurate details, with good 

 figures, of its habits in the fruit, and in preparing for transformation. 

 Ten years later, Roesel, a German writer, devoted several pages of his 

 wonderfully interesting "Insect Recreations" to a very good account of 

 the habits and life of the insect based upon original observations ; the 

 hand-painted pictures illustrating this have never been excelled in color 

 since. The next year, 1747, apparently the first English account, by 

 Wilkes, appeared. He compiled briefly from Roesel, but rendered his 

 account especially noteworthy, since he then gave to the insect the com- 

 mon name by which it is to-day recognized by all the English-speaking 

 peoples. 



During the next century and a quarter much was written of the insect 

 in Europe, and considerable was added to our knowledge of some of the 

 details of its habits and life. The most noteworthy German discussions 

 during this period, from 1750 to 1875, were those of Schmidberger, Ratze- 

 burg and Nordlinger. The excellent discussions by *' Rusticus " (1833) 

 and by Westwood (1838) still remain in the best English literature. 

 Among the best discussions in the French literature are those of Goreau 

 (1861) and Boisduval (1867), 



Although the insect had been introduced into America many years 

 before (its introduction and spread in America is discussed later on), it 

 seems to have been first noticed in American literature in 1819. Mr. 

 Joseph Tufts, of Charlestown, Mass., then published an account of rearing 

 a moth, instead of the plum curculio, which had been previously thought 

 to be the sole cause of wormy apples in America. Thatcher had made 

 the same discovery when he wrote the second edition of his ''American 



