262 INSECTS 



has demanded the expenditure of hundreds of thousands 

 of dollars in its study and attempted control, and has 

 injured the value of the crops in the affected states by 

 many times that amount. Less conspicuous but equally 

 destructive on a smaller area is the strawberry weevil, 

 which develops in the bud, preventing the formation 

 of fruit. 



This habit of placing the eggs in a protected position 

 or with reference to the food supply of the larva is 

 quite a trick among the snout beetles, and some of their 

 habits are very interesting as well as economically 

 important. The nut- weevils have the snouts very 

 much elongated and very slender so that they are 

 enabled to pierce the growing burr or husk and place 

 the egg in the developing nut, long before there is a 

 shell to be reckoned with. The plum curculio cuts a 

 little flap from the surface of the fruits that it infests 

 and in this bit of loosened tissue lays its egg, safe from 

 the pressure that might otherwise be exerted upon it 

 by the growing fruit. And so it is with other of the 

 Rhynchophora that attack our fuits, large and small. 



Even tree fruits are not exempt from midge attack, 

 one form depositing its eggs in the pear bud that the 

 young larvae may be in position to get down into the 

 seed capsule while yet the passage-way into the ovary 

 is wide open. Other flies attack growing fruits of many 

 descriptions and are furnished with a horny ovipositor 

 of considerable length for puncturing the skin. Apple, 

 orange, olive and plum, all have their "fruit-flies" that 

 demand toll of varying importance. 



Among the Lepidoptera, none is better known than 

 the codling moth, the larva of which feeds in apple, 

 pear and quince. Where no active measures are taken 

 for its control, it is no unusual matter to find from 90 

 per cent, to 95 per cent, of all the fruit on a tree wormy 



