114 



THE LANCASTER FARMER. 



[August, 



be a demand for it in tlie future we will trans- 

 fer them to the columns of The Farmeb. In 

 all that wo have read upon the suliject, outside 

 of our own experience, we have found but little 

 that was new to us. We are not acquainted 

 with a single destructive Lepidopterous insect 

 that is easier circumvented tlian the " Bag- 

 worm," if the attempt is made at the right 

 time. Any time between the fall of the leaves 

 in autumn and the leafing of tlie trees in the 

 spring, is the proper time, for then the bays or 

 follicles may be seen hanging on the naked 

 branches, seemingly reproaching the sloveidy 

 housekeeper and "cultivator for their want of 

 the necessary observation and energy to dis- 

 cover and remove them, since they are so easily 

 seen and removed. 



It i.s true that not all of those pendant folli- 

 cles upon the trees may contain the eggs of 

 the previous season, but many of tliem do, and 

 each of these is capable* of producing from 

 three to four hundred young ; and no matter 

 how cold the winter has been, the following 

 month of May or .June is sure to hatch out a 

 goodly luunb'er of "leaf-eaters," unle.ss they 

 ha\e l)een destroyed by a parasite, of which 

 unhappily there "are, proportionately, only a 

 few. We jiresmne every intelligent and thrifty 

 farmer or fruit grower lias a pair of pruning- 

 shear.s, that is op-rated bya spring, apole and 

 a cord. With such an instrument he can 

 reach to the utmost ends of the branches of 

 any fruit trees, and clip off those " pandorean 

 boxes," and never ])ermit them to lie opened 

 and let out their liidden evils upon tlie vege- 

 talile world. According to our observations, 

 the females alvuijs attach their bags to a living 

 twig, and so (irmly too, that no rain, wind or 

 st(mii lias any loosening effect upon them. 

 Some of the males do the same thing, but not 

 all of them. We have always found the latter 

 in excess of the former by nearly one-half , and 

 many of these attach their follicles to a stem 

 of a leaf, and of course these will fall to the 

 ground with the leaves, but not before the 

 male insects have escaped therefrom. They 

 thus exhibit a wonderful instinct, for the fe- 

 males seem to frnow that their habitations 

 must have a permanent foundation, in order 

 to i>erpetuatc the species, and they make pro- 

 vision accordingly. As we intimated before, 

 the females never leave their bags alive, but 

 sometimes their shrunken bodies get wedjfed 

 into the neck below, and then, of course, the 

 young cannot come forth, and consequently 

 perish. After the females are done depositing 

 their eggs their pupa skins are nearly full of 

 them, securely packed in the silken floss which 

 they have rubted from the hind ends of their 

 bodies. Except those that were bred under 

 our own supervision, we never saw but a single 

 male insect abroad, and that one somehow en- 

 tered the bulk window of a grocery store, in 

 which a brilliant light was burning. This was 

 probalily one of those "discontents," in ex- 

 cess, that never had been mated, and had gone 

 abroad in search of those pleasures denied him 

 at home. Finally, our advice is, " first, last 

 and always, " to wage an indiscriminate and 

 simultaneous war against them. 



THE APPLE WORM—CODLING MOTH. 



( Carpooapsa pomonella.) 

 AVhen apples were generally more abundant 

 than they are now — or, when they were of 

 less consequence as a culmary contribution 

 than they are now — there were just as many 

 "apple worms," or "codling moths," as there 

 are at present, or as there have been at any 

 period since that time. AVhen we were a boy, 

 say forty-five or fifty years ago, we could go to 

 almost any ftirmer in Lancaster county and 

 olitain permission to carry away as many ap- 

 ples as we wanted — even bushels of them — 

 without any other expense than saying, 

 " thankee," only provided we picked them off 

 the gi-ound. The groinid was perfectly cov- 

 ered with them, and we could scarcely place 

 our foot anywhere, immediately under the 

 trees, without treading on one or more apples. 

 Fully eighteen out of every twenty of these 

 aiiples were infested with a pink or white 



"worm," and many is the one we have bitten 

 in two, and perhaps swallowed the one-half of 

 it before we had discovered its presence ; and 

 many a time, too, we have "gagged" in at- 

 tempting to disgorge it. 



Of course, the infested apples fell first, and 

 practically these worms were a benefit rather 

 than an injury, for the trees certainly could 

 not have matured all their fruit without this 

 pruning process. 



The fallen apples were used to make cider or 

 " apple-jack," for immediate family use, and 

 to give away. Those that hung on the trees 

 were carefully picked and stored away for 

 winter use, or were sold ; and at least two out 

 of every twenty stored away contained a 

 worm. Nobody seemed to care much about 

 the worm, and few, perhaps, ever knew that it 

 was afterwards transformed into a "codUng 

 moth." 



We served five years among different farm- 

 ers, and we are sometimes astonished that wo 

 cannot recall the haViitual use of apples as a 

 culinaiy preiiaration, except in a.p2jlf I nitter and 

 "schnitzund knepf." We remember distinctly 

 the " liuek wheat cakes and sausages, " but very 

 little about apples, except Vietween meals or as 

 a night lunch. But all this is changed now ; 

 apples, for the past twenty or thirty years, 



have been neither so plentiful nor so sound, 

 nor yet so cheap as they were fifty years ago, 

 and this is caused by the increased population 

 and greater demand through new uses of this 

 fruit, as much as the scarcity of the fruit itself ; 

 and this brings the codling moth, or apple 

 woiTu, prominently into the foreground, and 

 the reason it appeal's more formidable than in 

 earlier days, is because there are more people 

 now to dispute its depredations upon the ap- 

 ple, and Ijecause of its somewhat diminished 

 domain — that is, the diminished quantity of 

 apjiles — making its presence at any given place 

 seem larger than formerly ; for if, for instance, 

 the apple worm in the early days we allude to, 

 destroyed one-fourth or one-third of the crop, 

 and we had still an abundance in what re- 

 mained, its drstructive character would not 

 appear so great as where, from the diminished 

 quantity and greater demand, it took two- 

 thirds or three-fourths and only left a small 

 residue. It is very certain that our apple crop 

 in Lnncaster county has, sometimes for several 

 years in succession, not lieen as large liy fifty 

 per cent, as the quantity formerly destroyed 

 by the codling moth, and probaljly its entire 

 extermination, if such a thing were desirable, 

 never can be accomplished until we cease to 

 grow apples or pears, or any other fruit that 

 would likely be agreeable to its taste. 



The codling moth belongs to the order Lep- 

 IDOI'TERA (butterflies and moths) and to the 

 Tortrix family (Toktricida), and is supposed 

 to have been introduced into this country 

 about eighty years ago, as it is identical with 

 a sjiecies existing in Europe, and proliably is 

 now as wide in its geographical range as the 

 apple itself. It is said to produce two broods 

 in a season, but these broods, from local causes, 

 are sometimes very irregular in their periods, 

 for we have found the worm in apples ii^ early, 

 middle and late summer, in autumn, in early 

 and midwinter, and in early and late spring. 

 It evit'ently can adapt itself to almost any 



circumstances, only so that it has apples, pears 

 or quinces to prey upon. The illustration ac- 

 companying this article will convey a suUicient 

 idea of its dillcreut stages of development, 

 without a scientific description. Fig. e repre- 

 sents the mature worm, about the natural size. 

 In its earlier stages it is white, or nearly so, 

 Ijut when mature it i.s of various shades of pink 

 in color, and is sparsely covered with short 

 hairs, which arise from small tubercles distrib- 

 uted over the different segments of the entire 

 body. Fig. h represents the head and first 

 segment enlarged, which are of a brownish 

 color ; Fig. d shows the pupa ; Fig. / tlicper- 

 fect insect in repose, and Fig. g the same with 

 the wings expanded, and also of the naturiU 

 size. Fig. i shows the cocoon, white inside, 

 but more or less covered on the outside with 

 debris of various kinds. The pupa is a light 

 brown, and has rows of small spines on its 

 back, by which it pushes itself out of its flat- 

 tened cocoon, when it emerges into the outer 

 world a perfect "codling moth." It is then a 

 very "pretty creature," its front wings being 

 irregularly streaked, crosswise, with undulat- 

 ing bars of bro^vn and gray, and on the hinder 

 angle is a moderately large brownish spot, 

 with lines of a bright metallic or golden lustre. 

 Its real beauties become more apparent under 

 a moderate magnifier. Numerous as this in- 

 sect is, and great as has been its destructive 

 character, it is not generally known, even to 

 applegr owers, and although its excavations as 

 a worm in the apple are anything but a benefit 

 to it, yet when the fmit is large, a moth may 

 mature in it without damaging more than an 

 eighth or a tenth of it, and the remainder can 

 be used ; but when the fniit is small, it is* 

 often rendered entirely useless. In this locality 

 the moths make their first appearance about 

 the middle of May, sometimes earlier, and the 

 females deposit their eggs in the young fruit, at 

 the point marked 6 in our illustrations, where 

 the young worms, as soon as they are hatched 

 from the eggs, enter the fruit and excavate it, 

 in the manner shown at a, also exhibiting its 

 channel and aperture of escape, when it has 

 finished its course as a worm. 



If all things are favorable, these worms 

 mature in about a month, therefore the first 

 brood of the season leaves the apple from the 

 fifth to the fifteenth of June, and the moths 

 again appear between the first and the middle 

 of .luly; but there is no uniformity in their de- 

 velopment, for about the time some of the 

 worms are mature and are leaving the apple, 

 others are only hatched from the eggs and are 

 entering. Generally there is but one worm in 

 an apple at a time, but we have sometimes 

 found two. We believe, however, that more 

 than two is rarely ever found. Some apples, 

 of course, do not "fall, even when infested with 

 these worms, and even some entire kinds resist 

 them in this respect, but the nuijority of the 

 apples infested fall. Now, if these fiillen ap- 

 ples are gathered before the worms have es- 

 caped, and are fed to swine or cattle, or if 

 swine are permitted to have the r.ange of the 

 orchard, many of them will be destroyed. 

 They do not, like the mrcalios, leave the 

 aiiplcs to go into the ground, but seek a shelter 

 elsewhere, above ground, in which to spin 

 their cocoons. In crevices of the rough bark, 

 or under scales and chips of bark, or in bunches 

 of dry leaves, are favorite places for this 

 purpose. 



Therefore, it is recommended to furnish 

 such places of shelter artificially, by placing 

 old piecesiJf cloth in the crotches of the limbs; 

 by tying hay, straw, or cloth bands around the 

 trees ; and examining them at least once in 

 every ten days, and then destroying the worms 

 and cocoons that are found there. We have 

 seen it suggested that old cloth bands should 

 be used, and every week or two they should 

 be taken ofl" and passed through a dothc-s- 

 wringer. The late broods of these insects re- 

 main a long time in the worm state, even 

 after they are spun up in a cocoon. We have 

 found the worm in the ain^le in midwinter ; 

 and wlien^ apples are kept in barrels for ship- 

 ment, when the barrels are opened in the lat- 

 ter part of winter, or early spring, sometimes 



