18 



Insect Pests. 



Life-History and Habits. 



They frequent gardens and orcliards, and lay their eggs almost 

 exclusively on apple trees. 



Wood (1), in his ' British Moths,' says they are " said to feed on 

 the small stems and twigs of the apple tree." 



This does not appear to be always the case, for the trunks only 

 seemed to be attacked at Croydon. 



The moth lays its eggs on the trunk of the tree and the larvee 

 tunnel under the bark ; there they work until they are mature, and 

 then they eat out a hollow in the "wood, which they line with silk of 

 a dull grey colour, and cover the outside with brown wood chips. 



The larva is dull yellowish-white. Buckler (2) describes a 

 pinkish pulsating dorsal vessel, with an internal purplish - pink 

 tinge from segments five to eight ; this could not be detected in the 

 specimens sent me. The head is retractile and shiny reddish-brown ; 

 the second segment is somewhat wider than the others, and has a 

 brown dorsal shield : the segments are very distinct, and the prolegs 



FIG. 3.— COCOONS AND PUP^ OF THE APPLE CLEAKWIXG {^£'jeria )n>JopijoriiUS. Bork.). 



small and very inconspicuous ; there are traces of spots, each termi- 

 nated by a bristle. The specimens sent were mature, and measured 

 a little more than § inch in length. The whole larva seems rather 

 flattened. The mature larva? were very sluggish when extracted from 

 their irregular burrows. They had all pupated by the 29th of June. 



Tiie puprt> (Fig. 3) are bright pale brown, and lie completely 

 protected in the silken cases covered with rich brown wood chips and 

 apparently some " frass " from the larval workings. In length the 

 pupfe varied from a little over 4- to nearly h inch. 



They were all curved and slender, and tapered to a point at the 

 apex, which is bluntly rounded with a ring of spines ; the first five 

 abdominal rings have two dorsal rows of spines, the two following, one 

 row each. The spines are somewhat darker than the ground colour. 



When ready to hatch, the pupce make their way partly out of the 

 cocoons, and the empty brown skins are seen protruding from the trees. 



