THE RED BUG INJURIOUS TO THE ORANGE. 15 
the rind and into the pulp of the orange. Many were seen sucking dried 
orange peel which had been cut from the fruit and thrown upon the 
sand. The bugs at Harp’s were in all stages of growth, and of all sizes. 
Many adults in copulation. As the eggs are not deposited in masses, 
but dropped singly in the sand, none were seen. They are evidently now 
breeding with great rapidity, as the weather for the past ten days has 
been very warm. Oranges attacked by the red bugs show no traces of 
punctures externally, but drop from the trees, and soon rot. The side 
which rests upon the ground usually softens first, but this is not in- 
variably the case. Harp has lost a large part of his crop, and says the 
whole profit made on his cotton has been wiped out by the loss on his 
oranges. A single tree near the house, and at some distance from the 
cotton, still bears a few oranges upon the upper brances, 20 feet from 
the ground. Every orange now upon this tree has from six to twelve 
red bugs (adult) clustering upon it and sucking. If not picked they 
will drop in two or three days, and in any event they will rot. 
January 18.—Heard to-day that the red bugs had attacked Newsom’s 
grove, and immediately visited it. I found a large force of men strip- 
ping the trees of fruit and packing them for shipment. Red bugs, 
although not as numerous as at Harp’s, were seen upon nearly every tree 
which bore fruit; even upon the topmost branches they were seen wan- 
dering over the fruit, and puncturing it. Many were also seen flying 
from tree to tree. On the ground under the trees, which was littered 
with freshly-fallen fruit, comparatively few bugs were seen. They seem 
to prefer the fruit on the tree, probably because of the shade, as the 
bugs do not like the direct rays of the sun. As there was an abundance 
of fresh fruit, the bugs did not attack scraps of orange peel upon the 
ground, as at Harp’s. I saw in one instance a cluster of bugs sucking 
the pulp of a freshly-torn fragment of orange. In this case they did 
not insert the boring tube, nor unsheath it, but sucked the surface of 
the moist pulp with the tip of the proboscis, like flies. Nearly all the 
bugs were fully adult and winged. I saw but one or two young, with 
wing-pads partly developed. It is more than probable these bugs came 
by flight from the cotton fields at Harp’s and his vicinity. Harp’s is 
the nearest cotton. It is distant 3 miles southwest. Dr. Newsom first 
noticed a few red bugs in his grove about two weeks ago, but gave them 
no particular attention, as he was entirely unaware of their power to 
injure fruit. Dr. N. has raised no cotton for years. With one excep- 
tion none has ever been raised by any of his neighbors other than Harp, 
and a few others still farther to the southwest. This exception was a 
single isolated field of cotton raised last year at a distance of a quar- 
ter of a mile to the south. One man in this vicinity fertilized his 
young grove with cotton seed two years ago, but no one has since done 
so. Harp and others that raise cotton in that neighborhood, of course, 
fertilize with the seed, where cotton is raised in the grove. Dr. N. had 
been absent for a week, and upon his return, day before yesterday, found 
