466 



Insects most injurious to Cultivators 



crop, the present would therefore be a very small one; the over- 

 bearing of one season preventing the full crop of the next, and 

 thus maintaining the equilibrium. Direct observations seem, 

 however, to have negatived this suggestion. 



In conducting future enquiries into this subject, it will be re- 

 quisite to observe at what period the injury is committed; 

 whether, as in the case supposed by Mr. Spence, the blossoms 

 are prevented from expanding; whether the fruit falls im- 

 mediately after die corolla; whether the fruit has attained a 

 small size before falling; or whether, as in the case of the codling 

 moth, whose history forms the twelfth number of my series 

 {Ga7^d. Mag., May, 1838), the fruit has reached its full growth. 

 At all these periods the crop may be affected ; and it must be 

 evident, that, as the causes of the injury vary according to the 

 period at which it takes place, the remedies must be equally 

 various. 



I have not yet been able to complete my observations upon 

 the moth, the larva of which burrows into the apple before it 

 has attained the size of a nut. In the mean time, the natural 

 history of an equally destructive insect, which devours the apple 

 bud, and which has been omitted in Major's work on fruit trees, 

 and in the Arboretum Bri- 

 ta)inicum, accompanied by 

 figures of the insect in its 

 different states, will not be 

 without interest. 



At the period when the 

 apple is in flower, one or 

 more of the buds (j%. 95. 

 cc) in a bunch of blossoms 

 (a) may be observed unex- 

 panded, and presenting an 

 appearance quite unlike their 

 beautiful neighbours (i^). Tlie 

 effect of this is soon per- 

 ceived in the faded rusty 

 brown colour and withered 

 appearance of the bud; and its 

 cause is the presence, in the 

 interior, of an insect in differ- 

 ent states of maturity. In the 

 bright sunny days of March 

 and April, asmall brown beetle 

 {Jig.95.a; and^g.96.c, natu- 

 ral size; c, magnified), with a moderately long snout, may be seen 

 crawling up the stems of the apple tree, in search of the unexpanded 

 blossom buds, into each of which the female (after coupling with 



