A CARELESS NATURALIST 



out at the end of next May, just when the blossoms are 

 getting ready for them. These codlin-moth apples cannot 

 fail to have been noticed by the reader, as the tunnels in the 

 ripe apple are most conspicuous. The gradual fattening of 

 the caterpillar can also be traced, for its first tunnel down to 

 the seeds is quite narrow, while the way out gets wider and 

 wider as the creature became stouter and fatter whilst 

 eating its way through the flesh. 



The Pear Midge attacks at the same place, but the mother 

 insect has a long egg-laying tube, and puts from fifteen to 

 thirty eggs into the opening pear blossom. The pears go on 

 growing, but of course are quite spoilt by the maggots 

 within. These latter have a curious springing or jumping 

 habit, and when they reach the soil bury themselves an inch 

 or two below the surface. 



So that all the care and neatness with which the young 

 flowers and buds are packed up goes for nothing, and these 

 insect pests get all the benefits of the apple and pear ! 



Besides these, there are hundreds of sorts of caterpillars 

 which devour the leaves bodily. Cabbage-white butterflies, 

 magpie-moths, gipsy-moths, diamondback-moths, and others, 

 lay their eggs in hundreds. Many lay 300 eggs each. 



In the United States, somebody had sent an entomologist 

 a present of some eggs of one of these moths. They were 

 placed on a paper near a window which happened to be open ; 

 the entomologist went out, and the paper must have blown 

 across the street into a garden on the other side. At any 

 rate, two or three years afterwards it was found that some 

 trees were badly attacked by this moth. Nobody thought 

 much about this, though of course it was interesting to find 

 a new moth. But the pest became a very serious one. In 

 consequence of the stimulating air of the United States the 



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