22 STATE POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



but continued gnawing the bark, forming a small girdle around 

 the branch upon which it was feeding. 



The female lays her eggs mostly on the bark at the foot of the 

 tree, and the young hatch and commence gnawing into the bark 

 within a fortnight afterwards. They invariably live for the first 

 year in the sapwood and bark. The hole by which the young 

 enter is so small that it soon fills up. In the case of young trees, 

 where the borer works along under the bark, the organic connec- 

 tion of the bark has been destroyed, and it turns dark, sometimes 

 shrinking so as to form a crack from which the castings fall out, 

 and thus the borer may be detected. 



This insect remains in the tree three years, when it works its 

 way to the bark, goes into the pupa state, where it remains some 

 four weeks, after which it escapes from the tree. There is, per- 

 haps, no surer and better mode of destroying the borer after it 

 has once entered the tree, than to dig it out with a sharp knife, or 

 to run a wire into tlie holes and pierce the borer; but to prevent 

 the beetles from laying their eggs upon the trunks of the trees, 

 both Dr. Fitch, and Prof. Riley, the accomplished entomologist of 

 Missouri, very highly recommend that soap be applied to the 

 trunks of the trees, from the limbs down close to the ground. 

 Either soft soap may be used, or common bar soap, rubbed on. It 

 would be well, also, to put a piece of soap in the principal crotch 

 of the tree, that it may be washed down over the trunk by the 

 rains. The application should be made in May, or before the 

 beetles are ready to lay their eggs. 



The Codling Moth or Apple Worm, ( Garpocapsa pomonella, h.) 

 This insect is a native of tlie old world, but is now, I think, to 

 be found in all parts of the world where apples are raised. It is 

 mostly two brooded, the second brood hibernating in their snug 

 little silken cocoons, under some fragment of bark or other shelter. 

 In the latter part of June and the first of July, they escape from 

 their cocoons, and after pairing the female flits about among the 

 apple trees, during the night only, laying an egg in the blossom 

 end of one apple after another. In from four to ten days the egg 

 hatches, and the worm eats its way into the apple, where it re- 

 mains from twenty-five to thirty days, becoming fully matured, 

 when it bores its way out through the side and escapes, either 

 before the fall of the apple or immediately after, and makes its 

 way to some crevice in the bark of the tree or other sheltered 



