280 REPORT OF STATE BOARD OF HORTICULTURE. 



THE CODLING MOTH. 



{Carpocapsa ponioneUa, Linn.) 



Order Lepidoptera : family Grapholithid.e. 



By Peof. M. V. Slingerlaxd. 



Almost every lover of fruits has seen a wormy apple, and most people 

 understand that, as our little two-year-old daughter puts it. "a naughty old 

 worm did it." The time is soon coming when these little observers of 

 nature will not be content with this meager information, and fathers and 

 mothers will be called upon to tell more of the story of the life of this 

 '•naughty old worm." How few of us know this story I 



This apple worm is one of the most serious drawbacks to the profitable 

 growing of apples by the average fruitgrower. From one-fourth to one-half 

 of the apple crop in the United States is usually ruined annually by this 

 insect ; it thus exacts millions of dollars of tribute yearly from our fruit- 

 growers. As many of our more progressive orchardists have already learned, 

 the number of wormy fruits can be largely reduced by the intelligent appli- 

 cation of modern methods. In spite of the fact that this insect usually 

 causes a greater monetary loss to the apple grower than all the other insect 

 foes of the apple combined, yet it can be often more easily controlled than 

 the apple borer, the canker worms, and several other orchard pests. We 

 wish that every apple grower could be induced to read, from nature's book 

 if possible, the life-story of this insect, and then put to practical use the 

 knowledge thus obtained. For we are hopeful that then it would not be 

 necessary to look over a bushel of apples in our city markets to find half a 

 dozen that were not wormy ; and besides the apple grower would then be 

 prepared to introduce a very interesting bit of nature-study into the home 

 whenever the little ones chanced upon the work of the ''naughty old worm." 

 It has come to be a well-established fact in our experience among fruit- 

 growers, that those who combat their insect foes with the least trouble, the 

 most successfully, and get the most fun out of it — they are the ones who like 

 Hiawatha have : 



"Learned their names and all their secrets. 

 How they built their nests in summer, 

 Where they hide themselves in winter, 

 Talked with them when'er he met them."* 



*As some inquisitive mind may wonder why it is necessary that man should be 

 tormented with this little worm whose palace is the wormy apple, we submit the only 

 attempt at an explanation that we have seen : "Or were they created, solitary preachers 

 on each little globe of fruit, which falls like manua from above, to teach us some great 

 moral lesson? Come they into our vei-y faces to remind us how 'dearly we pay for the 

 primal fall?' Do they inhabit the finest specimens of that fruit by which our first 

 mother was tempted, in order to bid us taste the viands of Eden, and make us feel 

 that 'the trail of the serjjant hangs over them all ?' " 



