Volume I JULY, 1914 No. 2 



PRELIMINARY NOTES ON DAMAGE TO 

 APPLES BY CAPSID BUGS. 



By J. C. F. FRYER, M.A., 



Entomologist to the Board of Agriculture, 

 Fellow of Gonville and Cains College, Cambridge. 



(With Plates IX and X.) 



That plant bugs of the family Capsidae can be responsible for a 

 serious form of injury to apples has been recognised in this country for 

 several years. Cases have been recorded by Theobald [1] and by 

 CoUinge [2] while complaints have been received from time to time by 

 the Board of Agriculture from fruit growers in various parts of the 

 country. On the continent brief references can be found to the Capsidae, 

 notably to the genus Lygus, in most works on economic zoology, but the 

 precise form of injury here dealt with does not seem to have been gener- 

 ally recognised. In America members of the Capsidae are well known 

 as pests to both apples and pears and, though with the exception of 

 Lygus pratensis Fab. the species there are not those found in Europe, 

 yet the type of injury produced seems to be much the same. In this 

 connection attention may be drawn to the papers of Taylor [3] on 

 Lygus pratensis, of Crosby [4] on Heterocordylus^ malinus Rent, and 

 Lygidea mendax Rent., and of Caesar [6] on the two latter species and on 

 Neurocolpus nubilus Say. and Paracalocoris colon Say. where full accounts 

 may be found both of the insects and the injuries they produce. It will 

 suffice to point out here that at least one author, Caesar, has found some 

 difficulty in showing which of the various species found on apples are 

 actually responsible for the damage and that while Crosby in the U.S.A. 

 lays most of the blame on H. malinus and L. mendax, Caesar in Canada 

 attributes the injury primarily to N. nubilus and P. colon, treating the 

 two previous species as of secondary importance. The difficulty in 

 the identification of the actual cause of the damage has also been felt 



^ An allied species, //. flavipes Matsuma damages apples in Japan. Nitobe [5j. 

 Ann. Biol, i 8 



