no Bulletin 142. 



thus having but little effect on the fruit, except to render it unattrac- 

 tive to buyers and eaters. Usually " wormy " fruit is practically 

 worthless for almost any ])urpose, but much of it is often icd to stock 

 or to us in the form of sweet cider. 



If(?7L' and When the IVoj'ms Leave the Fruit 



When the caterpillar is ready to leave the fruit, it pushes away the 

 plug of pellets, described above and shown at a in figure 134, and 

 crawls out, leaving a round, blackish-looking "worm-hole" as shown 

 at /> in the same figure. When this exit-hole is found, one can easily 

 tell whether a fruit still contains the worm or not by the presence or 

 absence of the plug of pellets. It is said that the worms leave the 

 fruit mostly at night. 



If the fruit has already fallen to the ground, the caterpillar proceeds 

 to crawl to some secure and suitable place in which to begin its 

 preparations for becoming a moth. Those worms which leave the 

 fruit on the tree were seen by LeBaron in the orchard by lamp-light 

 to either let themselves down to the ground by a silken thread, which 

 they spun as they went, and then crawl back to the trunk ; or they 

 crawled from the apple onto the branch, and thence down to the trunk. 

 Cook, from some experiments made in 1S75, thought that the worms 

 seldom, if ever, dropped from the tree to the ground ; and that at 

 least one-half of them did not descend to the ground at all. Trimble 

 records collecting a number of worms and putting them on the ground 

 in the vicinity of an apple-tree. They crept about at random for a 

 little while, but, if not too far off, most of them were soon seen going 

 in the direction of the tree. 



The date when the worms which enter the fruit in the spring, get 

 full-grown and leave, cannot be stated definitely. For the irregularity 

 in the appearance of the moths at that time is so great that oftentimes 

 some of the earliest worms will be ready to leave when others hatched 

 from later eggs will be just entering the fruit. In the latitude of 

 St. Louis, Riley records finding full grown worms as early as the 5th 

 to the loth of June. Usually, however, the early summer brood of 

 worms in the latitude of New York do not mature until July and 

 later. From the 1st of July until winter ^sets in, one can usually find 

 at any time worms of all sizes in the fruit; and large numbers of them 

 do not leave the fruit until it has been barreled or stored for winter. 



