APPLE INSECTS 165 



half-grown insects hibernate, all the other stages being killed 

 by winter conditions. In New York the winged males emerge 

 in May, and the females mature and begin giving birth to living 

 young during the latter part of June. The young develop 

 inside the body of the mother in thin membranous, sac-like 

 eggs and most of them burst through the sac and are born alive, 

 but some of these eggs may be laid before the young hatch, 

 so while the insect is usually ovo viviparous it may be partially 

 oviparous. A single mother is capable of giving birth over a 

 period of six weeks to nearly 600 young but doubtless does not 

 average more than 100 to 200 ; many of these are males, and some 

 soon die. The tiny yellow, six-legged young crawl from under 

 the mother scale and often spend about a day in finding a suit- 

 able place to settle down and insert their long, thread-hke mouth 

 parts with which they suck their food from the interior tissues 

 of the plant. In a few hours the body becomes covered with 

 a mass of white cottony and waxy fibers which in 2 or 3 days 

 mat into a pale grayish scale that gradually becomes larger and 

 darker until in about two weeks the first molt of the insect 

 occurs. Up to this point the males and females and their scales 

 have been indistinguishable, but after this molt they both lose 

 their legs and antennae and the females their eyes also. The 

 males have large, purple eyes and undergo two more molts, 

 gradually developing into delicate, orange-colored, two- 

 winged, fly-like insects in from 3 to 4 weeks. The yellow 

 female insects, with their thread-like, sucking mouth parts two 

 or three times as long as the body, remain circular, flattened 

 and sac-like in form, molt a second time in from 3 to 5 weeks, 

 and in a few days mate with the males. In molting the old 

 skins spht around the edge of the body, the upper half adhering 

 to the scale beneath the central nipple and the lower half form- 

 ing sort of a ventral scale next to the bark; the second and 

 third cast skins of the male are pushed out from beneath the 

 scale. 



