THE STATE ENTOMOLOGIST. 103 



There is a fact connected with the Codling Moth which, though of 

 interest to entomologists is not generally known, and has never been 

 published in this country. It has always been difficult to distinguish 

 the sexes of this moth, but there is an infallible index recently pointed 

 out by Mr.Zeller in his "Lepidopterologische Beobachtungen im jahre 

 1870." It consists of a black pencil or tuft of hairs of considerable 

 length on the upper surface of the hind wings. It springs from a 

 point close to the base of the wing and by the side of the median 

 nervure, and lies in a groove running alongside of that nervure to 

 about half the width of the wing, the groove forming a distinct carina 

 on the under surface. The tuft when closely fitted into this groove is 

 not easily noticed, but since my attention has been drawn to it, I 

 have readily detected it on all my cabinet specimens, and it can easily 

 be raised by the point of a needle. 



Thus we find that important features are often revealed upon 

 close scrutiny of our commonest insects, and the fact that this fea- 

 ture was so long overlooked in our Codling Moth should teach us to 

 be all the more careful and cautious in our examinations and descrip- 

 tions. Two similar instances of general oversight of common features 

 in common insects were pointed out to me last fall by that excellent 

 observer, Mr. J. A. Lintner, of the Agricultural Rooms, Albany, N.Y.» 

 who ascertained the facts that in the Butterfly genus Argynnis the 

 males have invariably a beautiful fringe of hair on the sub-costa of 

 the hind wings, while the females have not; and that in the genus 

 Grapta the males have hairy front legs while the females have not.* 



In my first Report (p. 65) I mentioned as an exceptional occur- 

 rence that this insect had been found quite injurious to plums around 

 London, Ontario ; but it has not hitherto been recorded as infesting 

 peaches. Mr. Huron Burt, of Williamsburg, Callaway county, in- 

 forms me, however, that three-fourths of the peaches in his vicinity 

 were infested with this worm, and that it was more abundant in this 

 stone-fruit than in apples, though its gnawings in the former are not 

 followed by the same serious consequences as they are in the latter. 

 In the peach the worm always lives near the stone, and bores no 

 other holes through the flesh than the one required for egress, and 

 the excrement is packed close to the stone, so that the fruit is gener- 

 ally but little injured for eating, cooking, drying or other purposes. 

 Mr. Burt did not actually breed the moths from these peach-inhabit- 

 ing worms, but as he is one of my most valued correspondents and an 

 excellent observer and has paid considerable attention to insects, I 

 have little doubt but that he is correct in concluding that they were 

 the larvae of the Coddling Moth, the more especially as he has fur- 



* The first mentioned feature, as a secondary sexual character, has long since been pointed 

 out, and according to Mr. H. W. Bates (Trans. Linn. Ent. Soc , Vol. XXIII, p. 502, 1861) is com- 

 mon to all the tropical genera but two (Lycotea and Iiuna) composing the Danoid HeliconicUr. Yet 

 Mr. Lintner's observation is certainly original in this country, for, striking and useful as the 

 feature is as a sexual characteristic, it is never given in the beautiful plates of Mr. Edwards's. 

 "Butterflies of North America." 



