66 INSECTS INFESTING THE APPLE TREE. 



leaves. They soon pair, and in the course of a few days the 

 females deposit their eggs. This operation consumes consider- 

 able time, so that about three months elapse before all of the 

 beetles have finished depositing their eggs. 



The latter are commonly deposited in the crevices of the 

 bark, and usually near the surface of the ground, but some- 

 times they are placed in the axil of the lower branches, or the 

 place where the branches start out from the trunk. In about 

 a fortnight, from each of these eggs is hatched a minute, foot- 

 less grub of a whitish color, with a yellowish head. These 

 grubs eat their way obliquely downward tlirough the bark, and 

 for the first year of their lives they live upon tlie inner bark or 

 sapwood, forming flat, shallow cavities. In their passage 

 through the bark they push their excrements and refuse 

 through the opening of their luirrow, and being of a glutinous 

 nature, it collects around the mouth of the burrow in a small 

 mass, which, being usually of an orange color, is readily detected 

 by the experienced eye. The following season the borer enlarges 

 its burrow, pushing its castings out of the openings of its bur- 

 row in pellets, reseml)ling in sha])o a grain of oats, but larger. 

 These arc commonly found in pairs, lying jnirallel, with their 

 points toward the tree. 



During this, the last Summer and Fail of their lives, they do 

 their principal damage by widening their burrows on every side, 

 destroying the alburnum deposited the year before, and often 

 the layer under it. If there is only one in a tree at this age, 

 and the tree is not more than one inch and a half in diam- 

 eter, the borer usually kills it by girdling entirelv around it, 

 except about one fourth of an inch, on one side. One liorer in 

 a large tree does not nuiterially injure it, but generally in such 

 trees there are from two to five, and they girdle all around to 

 within one fourth of an inch of each other's burrow, and thus 

 kill the tree. 



The borer or larva (Fig. 25a) during the last Fall of its life, 

 eats voraciously until cold weather sets in, when it carefully 

 hofises itself away until the following Spring. As soon as the 

 weather becomes mild, it begins to cut a cylindrical burrow 

 from three to six lines long, usually up the trunk of the tree, 

 but sometinu's dinn'tly through it, ending it just under the 



