LATEST INFORMATION ABOUT THE CODLING MOTH. 



the condition of the trees. The days 

 are few in which the poison can be 

 lodged in the little cavity ; once there, 

 if not washed out by rain before the 

 closing of the calyx segments it will be 

 securely protected by them and kept m 

 store for the little worm. If rain should 

 fall after spraying and before the basin 

 is securely covered, it will be necessary 

 to spray again immediately after. Tho- 

 rough work in spraying, so as to reach 

 every apple every time it is done, is as 

 important as to spray at the right time. 



Now, for those worms that fail to get 

 poisoned, be it those that do not enter 

 the apples at the blossom end, or such 

 of those that do, which escape being 

 poisoned. It is evident that we can- 

 not get at them before they will have 

 done their work of injury to the apple 

 crop, all that we can hope to do will be 

 to prevent them from becoming moths 

 that will lay eggs for another generation 

 of worms. It pays well to do even this, 

 for it is not altogether locking the stable 

 after the horse has been stolen. 



Usually a considerable number of ap- 

 ples fall prematurely, especially of the 

 early ripening varieties, because of the 

 presence of the worm within, or of the 

 work of one that had been within. The 

 writer has never been able to find half 

 of the fallen apples to contain a worm, 

 although a worm had evidently fed and 

 matured in nine tenths of them ; which 

 fact indicates that it will never do to 

 expect to destroy all the unpoisoned 

 worms by feeding the fallen fruit to pigs 

 or sheep, either in the orchard or else- 

 where. None the less it is important 

 to destroy even these, for every surviv- 

 ing female moth may lay about a hun- 

 dred eggs, and when pigs or sheep can 

 not be allowed in the orchard, the fallen 

 apples should be daily gathered and the 

 worms in someway destroyed. 



Very many of the worms leave the 



apples while they are yet on the tree and 

 crawl down to the trunk seeking a hid- 

 ing place in which to spin their cocoons, 

 and most of those that fall to the ground 

 find their way to the tree and crawl up 

 the trunk on the same errand. Avail- 

 ing ourselves of this habit we can trap a 

 great many of those worms by placing 

 around the trunk and where the branches 

 fork out from it, something that will 

 afford the worm a hiding place. The 

 writer has been in the habit of suggest- 

 ing a trap made of strips of cheap wrap- 

 ping paper, five or six of them placed 

 together like leaves of a book, long 

 enough to go around the tree trunk and 

 six or eight inches wide, made fast by a 

 string placed in the middle between the 

 upper and lower edges, and both these 

 roughened up so as to somewhat seperate 

 the leaves of paper, thus affording easy 

 entrance to the worms coming down or 

 crawling up the trunk. These paper 

 strips should be visited every ten days, 

 commencing at four weeks from the 

 falling of the apple blossoms, and con- 

 tinuing until September : at each visit 

 untie the string, carefully take off the 

 band without separating its sheets, run 

 it through a clothes-wringer that will be 

 taken along, replace and fasten with the 

 string and proceed thus through the 

 orchard. Mr. Slingerland advises put- 

 ting on two such traps, one at a short 

 distance from the ground, the other at a 

 like distance from the branches. 



In the old Niagara district this insect 

 produces a full second brood every 

 summer, but the worms cover them- 

 selves with a cocoon in the fall, they do 

 not change to the pupa state until the 

 following spring. These second brood 

 worms are found in our late fall and 

 winter apples, rendering less or more of 

 them unfit for market. They go with 

 the fruit into cellars and storerooms, 

 and their cocoons are found in the 



197 



