190 BULLETIN NO. 62. 



Along with the development of a new agricultural country 

 apple growing naturally is taken up. Young trees are brought in, 

 planted and cared for, until they produce fruit. In the meantime, 

 in response to public needs, merchants purchase and ship in the 

 surplus apple crops of older settled regions. Along with the im- 

 ported apples are brought the larvae or pupae of the codling moth. 

 These in their cocoons may be secreted in the corners of the boxes 

 or barrels containing the apples or they may be secreted in any 

 ether articles whatsoever that were shipped in the same car or that 

 iater were stored in the warehouse near them. They may be even 

 hidden in the cracks and crevices of the freight cars themselves. 

 In these freight cars, after the fruit has been removed, they may 

 g^o hundreds of miles bearing another kind of merchandise and be side 

 tracked in another town. Such unsuspected cars may readily es- 

 tablish colonies of the moth, for sooner or later the adult or moth 

 stage is reached and the moths, following a natural instinct, go in 

 search of apple trees. This may occur in the same season or after 

 a winter spent in the freight car, the fruit cellar, or wherever the 

 cocoon was made or has been lodged by the merchant. Empty 

 apple boxes may be thrown out on a rubbish heap or even filled with 

 groceries and taken by the farmer to his home, often surrounded by 

 apple trees. 



Knowing the habits of this insect and enumerating the variou* 

 ways by which it may be carried over greater or less distances we are 

 led to wonder that Montana has been so slow to become generally 

 affected by it. 



Small orchards in the centers of population in new countries are 

 naturally the first to become infested and these orchards become 

 local centers of distribution for the surrounding country. Over 

 short distances the moth is mainly dependent upon its power of 

 flight for spreading and though a single moth may fly but a very 

 few miles, in the course of a few years, in a country where orchards 

 are not far apart, by going from orchard to orchard great distances 

 may be covered. Thus, through the combined means here outlined 

 the tendency is for the codling moth to enter and establish itself 

 wherever the apple is grown in any country on the globe. One 

 moth of either sex is incapable of starting a colony but a pair or more 

 may often be fomid in a single empty fruit box. 



