338 The Apple- Worm and the Apple- Maggot. 



THE APPLE-WORM AND THE APPLE-MAGGOT. 



Carpocapsa pomonella (Linnaeus) ; Trypeta pomonella (new species). 



These are two very destructive larvae, which burrow into the flesh of the 

 apple, so as to render it not only unsightly, but absolutely distasteful. The 

 first of these, the apple-worm, was originally, like almost all our worst in- 

 sect foes, imported from Europe ; though it has gradually spread westward, 

 till it now infests nearly the whole northern half of the Valley of the Mis- 

 sissippi. The second larva, the apple-maggot, is a native-American species, 

 and breeds naturally in our wild haws and crabs, but, within the last 

 few years, has been noticed to attack the cultivated apple in Massachusetts, 

 in Connecticut, in New York, and probably in Vermont also. What is 

 very remarkable, although the very same species exists, to my personal 

 knowledge, in Illinois (for I bred it myself there many years ago from haws, 

 or thorn-apples as they are sometimes called), yet it has not, as yet, been 

 ascertained to attack cultivated fruit anywhere in the West. It would seem 

 as if, in this as in many other cases, it is only a local race of the species 

 that has acquired the habit of attacking tame and imported instead of wild 

 and indigenous species of plants ; and that this race transmits to its de- 

 scendants, by the law of inheritance, the peculiar habits which it has itself 

 incidentally acquired. Thus the habit of pointing game in the field, which 

 is clearly an acquired and not a natural habit, is often transmitted by in- 

 heritance to young pointer puppies, without any artificial breaking or train- 

 ing whatever. On no other supposition than the above does it seem pos- 

 sible to account for the fact that the very same species of insects exists 

 both in the East and in the West, and yet attacks the cultivated apple only 

 in a certain limited region, even in the East ; for, according to Dr. Trim- 

 ble, " this new and formidable enemy of the apple is found in the Hudson- 

 river countiy, but has not yet reached New Jersey," * 



If these views be correct, we may anticipate that the apple-maggot will 

 gradually spread westward, till, in some twenty or thirty years' time, it be- 

 comes as great a pest in. the Valley of the Mississippi as it now is in New 

 England and New York. 



* New- York Semi-weekly Tribune, July 19, 1867. 



