THE CHERRIES OF NEW YORK 93 



under the skin of the cherry in mid-summer. From these eggs small, 

 whitish maggots about one-third of an inch long hatch and eat out a cavity 

 in the ripening fruit. These maggots when full grown pupate in the ground 

 and remain there until the following season. The only effective pre- 

 ventive or remedial measure to take against the pest in large orchards is 

 to spray with a sweetened arsenical, but in small plantations chickens are 

 fairly effective in scratching up and eating the pupating maggots. 



I'he cherry fruit maggot is probably responsible for most of the 



" wormy " cherries in New York but the plum curculio is also a cause of 



" wormy " fruits and in some seasons is a most formidable pest. This 



cvirculio^ (Conotracheliis nenuphar Herbst) is a rough, grayish snout-beetle 



somewhat less than a quarter of an inch in length, so familiar an insect 



as scarcely to need further description. The female beetle pierces the 



skin of the young cherries and places an egg in the puncture. About 



this cavity she gouges out a crescent-shaped trench, this cut or sting being 



a most discouraging sign to the cherry-grower, for he well knows that 



from the eggs come, within a week or two, white and footless grubs which 



biuTow to the stone and make " wormy fruit." Some of the infested 



cherries drop but many remain eventually to distract the housewife and 



those who eat cherries out of hand. Jarring the beetles from the trees, 



a method employed by plum-growers, is quite too expensive and ineffective 



for the cherry-grower and poisoning with an arsenate is the only practical 



means of combating the pest. Rubbish and vegetation offer hiding places 



for the insects and, therefore, cultivated orchards are freer from curculio 



than those laid down to grass. There are no cvirculio-proof cherries but, 



as with plums, the thin-skinned varieties are damaged most by the insect. 



The grub of the plum curculio is easily distinguished from the cherry 



fruit maggot. This " worm " is the larva of a beetle, a true grub, footless 



and with a brownish, horny head while the cherry fruit maggot, the larva 



of a two-winged insect, is a true maggot like that which comes from the 



common house-fly and hardly to be distinguished from the apple maggot. 



It is important to be able to distinguish in wormy cherries the grub of 



the curculio from the cherry fruit maggot in order to know and understand 



the nature of the two enemies in combating them. 



Another pest of this fruit is the cherry leaf -beetle {Galeriicella cavicollis 

 Le Conte) the larvae of which sometimes do much damage to cherry 

 foliage. The adult insect is an oval, reddish beetle about one-fourth of 



'Riley, C. V. An. Rpl. State Enlom. Mo. 1:50-56. 1869; 3:11-29. 1871. 



