354 FRUIT INSECTS 



small blackish dots near the outer margin. The female is said 

 to deposit her eggs on the fruit, but no one seems to have 

 described the egg. The young larva enters the partly grown 



berry and feeds on the pulp, 

 casting out the excrement 

 through the opening in the skin 

 of the fruit by which it entered. 

 ^'- .SHBttlflMHHI^ jfl^^ ^^ ^'i^^ sometimes enter several 

 ^PPUHmUr ^^^P* berries in succession, and often 



webs together several berries 

 with a silken thread. When 



Fig. 314. — The gooseberry fruit- fuU-grOWn it descends to the 



worm. Knight photo. ^^^^^^ ^^^ transforms to a 



pupa within a brownish oval cocoon beneath dead leaves or other 

 trash. The winter is passed as a pupa, and the moths emerge 

 the next spring soon after the fruit has set. 



The caterpillars are very active, and when alarmed will 

 wriggle out of the berry and hang suspended by a silken thread 

 only to return to 

 the fruit when th(^ ^- 'W^ 



danger is passed. 



Treatment. ^ ''^*' 



The control of this 



pest has not been Fig- 315. -(;(,oseberries iujurecnjy the gooseberry 

 ^ fruit-worni. Knight photo. 



worked out, and 



nothing better than hand-picking of the infested berries 

 has been suggested. Care must be taken in collecting the 

 injured fruit that the caterpillars do not crawl out and 

 escape. While satisfactory in a small garden, hand-picking 

 is too expensive to be practicable under commercial condi- 

 tions. If poultry are allowed to run in the field after the 

 crop is harvested, they will doubtless devour many of the 

 pupae in their hibernating quarters beneath trash on the 

 ground. 





m-^ ^' 



