PACKAitD ] THE POPULATION OF AN" APPLE TPtEE. 103 



ground. The Cicada also at times breaks off the twigs of 

 the apple in laj-ing its eggs in them. 



INFESTING THE TRUNK OP THE TREE. 



The Apple Tree Borer. — It is not particular!}^ creditable 

 to our fruit growers that the apple tree borer still maintains 

 such a sway in our orchards, and that we pa}^ an annual 

 tribute of trees and apples W'hich, were its value set forth in 

 figures, would appall the orchardist. The borer is the most 

 widely extended and wholesale in its destruction of all the 

 insects which prey upon the apple. The canker worm is 

 local, and even then less injurious, taking only the leaves 

 and apples, but leaving the trees. So with the tent cater- 

 pillar and bud worm ; but the "borer" has almost finished 

 its work of destruction and the tree is doomed, ere we have 

 read its death-warrant. The history of this beetle is as fol- 

 lows : during the night and sometimes in the hottest da3's of 

 the first week of July, in New England, and in May and June 

 in the western states, the female beetle flies around the trunk 

 of the tree, and during this period she deposits her eggs in 

 the bark near the root of the tree. How many eggs she 

 lays at one time is not known, but she deposits "one agg in 

 a place upon the bark, low down, at or very near the surface 

 of the earth ; but when these beetles are numerous, some of 

 their eggs are placed higher up, particularly in the axils 

 where the lower limbs proceed from the trunk" (Fitch). 

 Aliout a fortnight after the eggs are laid the 3'oung grub 

 hatches, and immediatcl}' begins to eat its way upwards 

 (according to Harris) or downwards (according to Fitch). 

 This grub is a little footless white worm, with the segment 

 next to the head large and thick, and only differs in size 

 from the fully grown worm (Fig. 129; &, pupa; c, beetle, 

 after Ililey). Says Dr. Fitch, "If the outer dark colored 

 surface of the bark be scraped off with a knife the last of 

 August or forepart of September, so as to expose tlie clean 



3 



