ISTew York Agkicultural Experiment Station. 811 



the young flowers. Thej rasip and puncture the tender parts at 

 the center of the bud and suck up the exuding juice for food. 

 These injuries, it will be seen, strike at the very heart of the 

 hoped-for crop and result in more harm than might be caused 

 later by many times the number of larger insects. Yet the num- 

 bers of the thrips, even at this stage, are by no means small ; and 

 two weeks later the white, maggot-like larvse may be found clus- 

 tered about the buds or in the open flowers like mites upon fowls 

 in a neglected poultry house, as is shown by the title page illus- 

 tration. The early injuries by the adult thrips, when these are 

 numerous, cause the buds to become " leaky," that is, sticky with 

 a viscid, brownish secretion — a condition very characteristic of 

 the work of this insect. At this time most of the adults are 

 beyond the reach of spray mixtures, but preparations should be 

 made to attack the larvse as soon as the falling of the petals makes 

 it safe to spray the flowers. 



The injured buds cease to grow and the whole blossom cluster, 

 if the mature thrips are plentiful, becomes stunted, shrivelled and 

 brown, as if blighted. If the attack is not made quite so early, 

 the insects feed in the opening blossoms, eating stamens, pistils 

 and petals ; or they may attack the tender leaves as these appear. 

 On the clusters attacked, the petals will be small and uneven in 

 size, the fruit stems dwarfed and irregular in length and the 

 flower generally blackish or brownish in color. The leaves of 

 the first-formed clusters are usually dwarfed in size, crinkly, 

 cup-shaped or otherwise deformed, and with margins irregularly 

 broken or blackened. The fruits setting on such clusters gen- 

 erally have weak stems and fall prematurely. 



The microscopic, whitish or yellowish, kidney- 



Egg-laying. shaped egg is placed within the tissues of the 

 plant. The female generally selects the fruit 

 stems for egg-laying and slits them with her sharp, curved 

 ovipositor, depositing a single egg in each slit. She begins this 

 work soon after emerging from the ground and continues it until 

 about the middle of May. The incisions may sometimes be so 

 frequent in a single stem that it will become weak and yellow, 

 allowing the fruit to fall prematurely. Usually the stems are only 

 roughened. 



