140 MASSACHUSETTS HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



a certaiu sense, borers, aud the application of insecticides can be 

 only partially successful. 



Recent experiments have shown that some value may be attached 

 to arsenical remedies if applied at the proper times. The eggs of 

 the Codling Moth are laid on the surface of the fruit, usually about 

 the calyx lobes, and the young larva may take enough of the 

 poison to kill it before it succeeds in eating into the apple, where 

 it would be safe. On the other hand the Plum Curculio deposits 

 its eggs within punctures or holes which it makes in the flesh of 

 the fruit, so that its grubs are generally out of the reach of poisons. 

 But as the beetles bite into the fruit for the purpose of oviposition, 

 .and also feed upon the young fruit and foliage, they may them- 

 selves take enough of the insecticide to prove fatal. 



The Plum Curculio is not merely an enemy to the culture of 

 plums, cherries, aud other stone fruits ; if neglected it may 

 become very destructive to such fruits as apples and quinces. 

 During the past summer I saw an orchard in which hundreds of 

 bushels of apples, chiefly of the Oldenburg variety, were ruined 

 by this insect, either by the beetles depositing their eggs in the 

 young fruit, or by the grubs living within it, or by the beetles 

 biting holes on the surface of the apples as they neared maturity,, 

 and thus destroying their commercial value. As this orchard is in 

 the vicinity of many long-neglected plum trees, where curculios. 

 have pi'evented the perfecting of any fruit, it may be that they 

 have been forced to seek other food than their first choice, and in 

 this case we iiave another example of the evil of neglect. 



In combating both Codling Moth and Plum Curculio, it is an 

 excellent practice at once to collect and destroy all diseased fruit 

 as soon as it falls ; also all infested fruit seen while the larvje are 

 within it. 



A peculiar class of l)orers consists of those usually very small 

 species which mine or tunnel within the parenchyma, or between 

 the upper and lower surfaces of the leaves. These little insects 

 are not often very troublesome in this region, but occasionally 

 they cause much annoyance. Their depredations usually appear 

 in the form of blotches, or irregular, gradually enlarging lines 

 through the leaves. 



The locust leaves are very commonly nuich injured by large, 

 whitish blotclies wliich are the mines of a beetle {Jlispa sntiiralis). 

 Many persons in the vicinity of Boston have noticed the ugly,. 



