116 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



these caterpillars as they lie under the loose bark and feeding 

 upon thorn. When spring comes, the caterpillar changes to a 

 pupa, and by the time the apple blossoms are falling the moth 

 escapes from the pupa and begins to fly among the trees. 



About a week after the petals fall, egg laying begins. The 

 eggs are tiny white specks, placed singly, either on the fruit, 

 its stem, or even on some leaf near by, and each moth may lay 

 from 50 to 75 eggs. About a week later the eggs begin to 

 hatch, and the little caterpillars crawl to the apples, if not 

 already on them, and more than three-quarters of them pass 

 to the blossom end. Here they gnaw their way into the space 

 between the sepals, and begin to feed. After a day or two 

 each starts in toward the core, around and in which it feeds 

 till nearly full grown. It now makes a tunnel toward the sur- 

 face. Arriving there, it forms an exit hole which it keeps 

 closed with silken threads mingled with excrement till it has 

 finished feeding, when it leaves the apple and crawls down the 

 trunk till it finds a suitable loose piece of bark beneath which 

 to pupate. 



Some of the caterpillars, — perhaps 20 per cent, — how- 

 ever, do not enter the apple at the blossom end, but at some 

 scar on the surface, where a leaf rubs against the fruit, or else- 

 where. For these after they have once entered the apple the 

 history is the same, but the difference in the place where they 

 enter makes a great difference in treatment necessary. In 

 either case nearly a month is spent in the fruit, and the first 

 caterpillars appear to finish feeding about the first of July. 

 After these have gone to the trunk and pupated, two or three 

 weeks are spent in this condition before the moth appears. 

 Later caterpillars, however, which are not ready to leave the 

 fruit before August, usually remain in the caterpillar stage 

 under the bark till the following spring; while the moths from 

 the early caterpillars go to the trees and lay their eggs for a 

 second brood, which works in the fruit during the fall months. 

 The caterpillars of this brood pay little attention to the blossom 

 end of the apple, but enter anywhere, and often do not finish 

 feeding until after the fruit has been gathered, and are accord- 

 ingly carried into the bins or barrels where it is kept, and on 

 leaving the apples form cocoons in any convenient crevice in 



