THE CALIFORNIA PEACH BORER. 83 
NATURAL ENEMIES. 
There is a species of ant which has been observed many times to 
attack adult moths, pulling them to pieces and literally eating them 
alive. It often happened that a moth would become entangled in the 
creases of the wire mesh or in the cotton of our trap cages where the 
traps were bound around the tree. Almost invariably their bodies 
would soon be torn to pieces by these ants. The ants presumably 
are not of economic importance in controlling the moth of the borer. 
On another occasion a nest of small white mites was taken from the 
body of a dead moth, as well as a dipterous larva. 
METHODS OF CONTROL. 
EXPERIMENTS WITH PREVENTIVES. 
Six large apricot trees in the insectary yard were treated as follows: 
The dirt was first dug away from the lower trunks to a depth of 8 or 
10 inches, the bark was scraped, the few worms present were removed, 
and the lime-oil wash was applied over the newly exposed bark and 
to a height of 16 or 18 inches above the ground. The mixture was 
swabbed on thickly with a large calcimining brush and was applied 
on June 25, 1908. 
On August 4, 1908, six weeks later, numerous clusters of eggs just 
ready to hatch were selected from the rearing cages and attached to 
the treated trees at a height of from about 5 to 10 inches above the 
ground, where they would normally be placed on untreated trees in 
the open field. This experiment was made under extremely unnatural 
conditions, because eggs are apparently never placed directly on 
any treated surface. It served our purpose, however, which was to 
determine the number of young that could really penetrate through 
the wash and get into the tree. The wash was still ina good condition 
on August 4, when the eggs were attached. Table VIII gives the 
details of the experiment and the results of examination of trees 
September 21. 
TaBLe VIII.—Details of experiment No. 1 with protective lime-oil wash against the 
California peach borer. 
plead Number | Date of 
Tree No. oF Position of eggs on tree. of eggs | hatch- Remarks. 
eaitrans hatened. ing. 
i 46 | 5 inches above ground on north side 43 | Aug. 12 | No signof borers found. 
of tree. 
2 85) eee 2s (3 bo: ARR eRe ey See tee ADE 0) ee. Do. 
3 HOW eee) (Shoei SU ets Gea S = DORM ceeaeess 75 |...do....| 3 empty pupal cases 
found. 
4 5 [ee le ee ee ee eae 139 | Aug. 25 | No sign of borers. 
5 74 | 2 inches above ground............... (il Sa Re Je eae 3 empty pupal cases. 
6 PAST ISK O hab Coy. (35 on 60 01 a 210 | Aug. 26 | No sign of borers. 
685 OLA oe Seinscoeccbecmcis = SONS eee si<cen 6 moths matured. 
