New York Agricultural Experiment Station. 5G1 



packed and shipped to some distant state. Such trees should 

 be thrown out and destroyed or the borers should be cut out 

 before the trees are packed. 



Nature of the Injury. 



The gummy exudations from the roots of the infested trees 

 near the surface of the ground indicate the work of this insect. 

 A close examination will show that the exudation comes from 

 an opening in the bark which leads to one or more channels just 

 underneath. These channels have been made by the borers and 

 are not infrequently found to girdle the trees, thus causing an 

 injury from which the tree is not likely to recover unless reme- 

 dial measures are at once resorted to. Plate XLIII, figs. 1 and 2, 

 are from photographs of plum roots (var. Myrobalan), which have 

 been injured by the Peach-tree Borer. At Fig. 2 the borer itself 

 is shown in the root which was cut open to expose the insect to 



view. 



Description and Life History. 



The peach-tree borer belongs to the same order of insects as 

 the moths and butterflies, and to a family of moths, the members 

 of which make a formidable array of injurious species. One of 

 the characteristics of this family is that the mature insects, un- 

 like most of our moths, have transparent posterior wings and 

 slender bodies and that they are easily mistaken for wasps or 

 bees by the casual observer. This is especially true of certain 

 species. Although the borers themselves are very common, the 

 parent insects are not generally known. The following careful 

 descriptions, taken from Dr. Fitch's First New York Report, pp. 

 114-116, published in 1856, will enable the reader to identify the 

 species. Dr. Fitch describes the male and female as follows: 

 " The male is of a deep steel-blue color, with various sulphur 

 yellow marks, and has a glossy lustre like that of satin. The 

 antennae are black, less than half as long as the body, abruptly 

 curved outward at their tips and densely fringed along their 

 inner sides with numerous fine short hairs, with a slight vacancy 

 between them at each of th(; joints. The feelers are yellow on 

 36 



