The Ccmitry Gcntlanaiis Magadnc 



265 



INSECTS IN PREMATUREL Y FALLEN FRUIT. 



OF the many insects which in one 

 stage or other of their existence feed 

 upon the wood, bark, leaves, flowers, and 

 fruit of our orchard and garden trees or bushes, 

 those numerous as well as destructive kinds 

 which penetrate, and so cause the premature 

 falling of the young fruit, demand special 

 attention during the summer months at the 

 hands of careful growers, with the view of 

 accomplishing their destruction as far as 

 possible, and consequently lessening the 

 virulency of their future attacks. 



"When a good wood-ripening and blossom- 

 bud forming autumn is succeeded by a mo- 

 derately mild winter, and a favourable bloom- 

 ing as well as fruit-setting spring, nature 

 occasionally assists the requisite process of 

 thinning, by thrusting off many of the young 

 fruit at or shortly before the commencement 

 of what is technically called its second or 

 final swelling, which is equivalent to the 

 stoning or hardening of the seed shells in 

 plums, cherries, and other stone fruit. This 

 thinning process, although not unfrequently 

 assisted by insect agency, is usually looked 

 upon approvingly rather than otherwise; but 

 the case is very different, when at like stages 

 of advancement thinly-set fruit is seen tumbling 

 down till a very scanty, or scarcely no crop 

 is left — an unsatisfactory state of things, for 

 which the weather, blight, or lightning are 

 usually but very often wrongly blamed in- 

 stead of insects, for the destructive abundance 

 of which cultivators are themselves very 

 much to blame. 



The very apparent mischief caused by leaf- 

 destroying insects, such as the gooseberry 

 caterpillar, the web-fonning apple caterpillar, 

 saw flies, aphid^e, red spiders, and many 

 others that might be named, as well as bark- 

 peeling beetles, branch- and fruit-disfiguring 

 mussel-scales, &c., marks them out as subjects 

 for extirpation, while the less evident, but 

 scarcely less mischievous workings of others, 

 secure for them an immunity which should not 



and would not be accorded to them were 

 their doings more closely investigated, and 

 their habits better understood. Among these 

 last insects which penetrate into, live upon, 

 and so cause the destruction of young fruit, 

 are much more numerous than is usually 

 supposed, and the following examples may 

 suffice to shew how they act, and also how 

 they may be in a great measure overcome. 



For some days in May, when the apple 

 trees were blossoming, the rather timid apple 

 saw-fly, Tenthredo 

 testudinea, might be 

 seen in quiet dry 

 weather, actively flit- 

 ting about, and oc- 

 casionally settling to 

 deposit its eggs with- 

 in the opened flowers. 

 In size it is not widely 

 different from our 

 common house-fly, its 

 wings are slightly 

 tinged with brown, its 

 body shining black 

 on the upper surface, 

 while the front and 

 sides of its head, as 

 well as the under 

 side of its body, 

 shoulders, antenna 

 and legs are of a pale orange colour. The 

 eggs then deposited in due time produced 

 little maggots or larv^E of a rather pale dirty 

 buff colour, with tawny heads, and a slender 

 pinkish hne along the back of each. These 

 may very frequently be seen on cutting up 

 young apples which fall in June or July, and 

 occasionally in slighdy deformed ones which 

 are still hanging. In both fallen and growing 

 apples they remain feedinguponthefleshy parts, 

 till at last they eat their way out ; the former 

 then crawling into and the latter dropping 

 upon the earth, where they forai their cocoons 

 and remain till the folloA\ang INIay, when they. 



Apple Saw-fly. 



