STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 8 1 



It is probably safe to estimate that four out of five of all the apples 

 in the iState that commenced growth in the spring were destroyed or 

 injured by tlie codling-moth before they reached maturity. From some 

 entire orchards, in the Alton district, that were full of fruit, not a bushel 

 of sound apples could be gathered. In the young and isolated orchards 

 of the more recently settled portions of the State the damage was least, 

 yet no locality was exempt, and no orchard visited showed more than 

 one half its fruit sound. 



Measures have been adopted by a few persons to destroy the larvse 

 and pupre of these insects. Those who have tied rags or strips of cloth 

 around their trees just below the lower branches, or placed them in the 

 forks of these branches, have found plenty of enemies secreted in them, 

 as often as once in ten days, ready to be scalded to death. Those who 

 have allowed their hogs to run in their orchards for several consecutive 

 years from June to October have been rewarded with a larger proportion 

 of sound apples than their neighbors, who used no precautions. There 

 are others who diligently pick up the fallen fruit as often as once in two 

 days, and feed it, either cooked or raw, to their swine, and thus secure a 

 greater immunity from the ravages of this insect for the next year. If 

 this practice of using the loose cloth bands be accompanied by that of 

 picking up and destroying the fallen fruit, and these measures be followed 

 up by scalding the barrels^ early in the following spring, in which the 

 apples have been stored in the cellar, the increase in the value of the 

 succeeding crop will more than repay the labor. If any one doubts the 

 utility of scalding his apple barrels, let him go to his cellar and loosen 

 the hoops of barrels containing apples, and he will become suddenly 

 convinced that it is not safe to neglect it. 



While examining some of the old orchards at Princeton, this fall, I 

 was invited by the proprietor of one of the best of them to look at his 

 fruit, of which several hundreds of barrels were stored in a shed ready 

 for shipment. On loosening the upper hoops to take out the heads, a 

 dozen or more of the larvae of this moth were dislodged and dropped to 

 the ground, while others had partially enclosed themselves in cocoons, 

 and still adhered to the hoops. The same appearance was seen in and 

 about the grooves of the chines. The fruit, large, and finely colored, 

 was already beginning to decay. It is well known that the codling- 

 moths emerge from these cocoons in spring, and find their way out of 

 the cellar or fruit rooms into the orchards; and since each moth deposits 

 two hundred or more eggs in as many young apples; and further, when 

 we consider that this insect is "double brooded" (has two broods yearly), 

 the importance of destroying them while in the larval or pupal state, is 

 apparent. 



The APPLE i.EAF-LOUSE, [Aphis mall), which was so destructive last 

 year, has not been found to any great extent this year. This fact, together 

 with the almost entire absence of the scab upon tiie apples, goes for to 

 corroborate the opinion given at our last meeting by the State Horticul- 

 turist, that this insect produced the scab by puncturing the skin of the 

 fruit, and sucking its juices. 



