APPENDIX. 281 



Niiturally much has been Avritten about an insect of such great economic 

 importance, and yet the literature embraces but comparatively few approxi- 

 mately exhaustive and comprehensive accounts of it; none of these are now 

 easily accessible to the fruitgrower. By far the best account, written by 

 Dr. L. O. Howard, was published in 1SS8. and no similar attempt has been 

 made by American writers since. Although many i-eports, comprising 

 thousands of pages of printed matter, have been made on the insects of 

 New York State, it is a surprising fact that everything therein pertaining 

 to this most important of all oi-chard pests would occupy little more than 

 half a dozen printed pages. We liegan a critical study of the insect in the 

 spring of 1896, and for nearly two years have devoted much time to careful 

 observations of its habits in all stages. Considerable time has also been 

 spent in ransacking all of the foreign, as well as American, literature that 

 fould be bought or borrowed ; several interesting facts luive been gleaned 

 from this search through many quaint and musty records which make up 

 the history of this insect. 



The above facts, we believe, fully warrant the somewhat exhaustive dis- 

 cussion of this pest which follows : 



SOME GENERAL HISTORIC'AL NOTES. 



It is said that Cato speaks of "wormy apples" in his treatise on agricul- 

 ture, written nearly two hundred years before the Christian era. In the 

 first century A. D., both Columella and Pliny doubtless refer to this insect 

 in their writings. Pliny says : "The fruits themselves, independently of 

 the tree, are very much worm-eaten in some years, the apple, pear, medler, 

 and pomegranate for instance." While the apple growers 6i these ancient 

 times were doubtless familiar with the work of this worm, yet the real 

 history of the insect itself ai)parently begins in 16.35, or almost with the 

 beginning of purely entomological literature. A translation, with a repro- 

 duction of the pictures, of this first quaint Dutch account is given in Fig. 

 12(5. Nearly a century seems to have elapsed before we again find the insect 

 discussed by entomologists. In 1728, Frisch, a German writer, gave us the 

 first detailed descri])tious of the insect: his grotesque pictures of the 

 different stages are reproduced in Fig. 126. Before the middle of the 

 eighteenth century, two other especially noteworthy accounts were pub- 

 lished. In 1736, Reaumur, a Frenchman, added some accurate details, with 

 good figures, of its habits in the fruit, and in preparing for transformation. 

 Ten years later. Roesel, a German writer, devoted several pages of his 

 wonderfully intei'esting "Insect Recreations"' to a very good account of the 

 habits and life of the insect based upon original observations ; the hand- 

 painted pictures illustrating this have never been excelled in color since. 

 The next year, 1747, apparently the fii'st English account, by Wilkes, ap- 

 IJeared. He compiled briefly from Roesel, but rendered his account espe- 

 cially noteworthy since he then gave to the insect the common name by 

 which it is today recognized by all the English-speaking peoples. 



During the next century and a quarter much was written of the insect in 

 Europe, and considerable was added to our knowledge of some of the 



