CHEERY INSECTS 



305 



fruit-flies in cherries at picking time, and often the fairest- 

 looking fruits contain the maggots which the housewife may 

 discover at canning i 



time, or in the bot- 

 tom of a dish of 

 luscious cherries 

 left over from a 

 previous meal. 

 The species which 



first attracted atten- ^^^- 259- — Cherries infested with fruit-fly maggots. 



tion by its ravages was R. cingulata. The full-groAvn light 

 yellowish-white maggot of this species is about J of an inch 

 in length and scarcely distinguishable from the apple maggot 

 (Fig. 258). There is but a single generation of this cherry 



fruit-fly annually, the maggots 

 'f ^ working in the cherries mostly 



during June, but some may be 



Fig. 260. — Cherry cut open and Fig. 261. 

 showing a maggot near the pit. 



Puparia of the cherry fruit- 

 fly (X 9). 



found even in August. The infested cherries do not drop, but 

 finally a rotting and sinking in of a portion of the fruit results 

 from the work of the maggots (Fig. 259). When full-gro^\^l the 

 maggots leave the cherries, go into the ground about an inch 

 and change to brownish puparia (Fig. 261) which hibernate. 

 The adult insects or fruit-flies begin to emerge about the middle 



