THE APPLE MOTH. 



The larva of the Apple Moth, like the grub of the Curculio, has usually a fruit 

 to itself, the parent moth depositing but one egg on a fruit, and it is supposed that 

 another Apple Moth will seldom duplicate that egg. 



The first part of the life of this caterpillar is usually passed in feeding on the 

 substance of the fruit near the blossom end, and while there it is quite small. 

 Afterwards it will be found in and around the core. The holes drilled through the 

 pulp are tunnels for passage only, not excavations made in feeding the contents 

 being a mere pomace, and not the castings of the insect. This indicates that the 

 chief food this caterpillar requires is to be found in the core, including the seeds, and 

 is in limited supply ; hence we seldom meet more than one in each fruit. If the 

 whole pulp of the fruit were suitable for food, most of our apples and pears would 

 afford ample nourishment for a dozen of these worms. 



The Apple Moth, like most other moths and butterflies, has a great number of 

 eggs to dispose of. She will have the appropriate nidus for her young if she can 

 find it ; and how far she will go in pursuit of Apples, Pears, or Quinces, if there 

 should be none near her native tree, or if they have all been appropriated by others, 

 before she was ready, is a difficult question to decide. One of the most interesting 

 subjects of contemplation to the naturalist is to watch the movements of moths in 

 the dusk of summer evenings. They will slow up to a plant or tree, as a steamboat 

 to a landing merely touching, then on again to another, and again and again, till 

 they find what they want, deciding, as they go, whether the leaves that come upon 

 those trees after an intervening winter will be the proper food, or will appear early 

 enough for the little ones that are to issue from their eggs. 



Kirby and Spence say that the progress of the Hessian Fly was at the rate of 

 fifteen or twenty miles a year. Dr. Fitch, in his most valuable account of the Wheat 

 Midge, says, that the spread of this insect along the country bordering the St. Law- 

 rence and Lake Ontario, was at the rate of about nine miles a year. But the history 

 of the appearance of these two insects, like that of the Apple Moth, in the different 

 parts of the country which they have visited, shows that they had no fixed rate of 

 progress. Speculations as to where an insect came from, or when it arrived, or at 

 what rate it can travel, will avail but little as to this Apple Moth pest. // is kere, 

 it is all over our country, wherever Apples and Pears are cultivated, in many places 

 appropriating half these crops every year, and it is rapidly increasing. While the 



