ENTOMOLOGIST AND BOTANIST. 



209 



wild varieties. Its natural enemies consist of 

 spiders, wasps, and a small undesciibed species 

 of Tachiiia fly which we have ascertained to in- 

 fest it in the larva state, and to which we have 

 g:iven the MS. name of desmin'. There is every 

 reason to believe that it is also attacked by a 

 small clay-yellow beetle, the Grape-\^ne Colaspis 

 (Colasjns friridn, Say), which, though a vege- 

 t;il)I(' feeder, may often be found in the fold of 

 tlie leaf in company with some shrunken, half- 

 dead worm. 



ENTOMOLOGICAL .lOTTINGS. 



[We propose to publish frnin tin 



Aorlliv to be recorded, on accmint 

 ;,il himorlance. We hope ,.ur read 

 ;oWLiids the {general lund; and in 



l-beduly identifled.:' 



Hot in Peaches and other Fkuits. — N^ew 

 Harmony, Ind., April 20, 71). — I grow but few 

 lieaches and observe those closely, and I believe 

 tliat I have generally, if not always, found that 

 the rot proceeds from a bite, which 1 suspect is 

 often made by a locust or grasshopper {Locus- 

 tud(B), but I know that it is very often made by 

 a brown soft-bodied insect that 1 call a cricket : 

 it is, I think, a little bulkier than the insect 

 flgured in the Entomologist as the Snowy Tree 

 Cricket. I have caught many of them while they 

 were e.itiug peaches and quinces. Shortly before 

 the quince becomes tinged with yellow these 

 ireatures bite small pieces out of them; in cer- 

 tain conditions of the quince and of weather the 

 WDund heals, but the bites made when the 

 weather is wet, or the quince is ripening, are 

 fatal. Rot commences around the hole and rap. 

 idly spreads, and tlie small hole made by the bite 

 is so (il)scnre as not to be noticed by those who 

 ill) nut expect to find it. The same process goes 

 i)u ill the peach ; it is attacked before it is nearly 

 y\\w, and in all its after stages; but the peaches 

 ill) not fall until a mass of rotten matter almost 

 i)l)liti-viiti-s the sign of the caiise of the rot. 

 Api)]i's arc injuri'il in I lie same manner. Nearly 

 all the rot tliat I have perceived in these vari- 

 eties of fruit, I have found has commenced 

 from the outside, and in that grown by ourselves 

 I have found the sign of the bite, excepting 

 where some, out of my reach, has been allowed 

 to fall and smash. In the fruit I liave bought I 

 have often foimd the same sign, but very often I 

 forget to exanune ; and, of course, most of the 

 bitten fr-uit is left to rot in the orchard, or is 

 consumed by pigs, and is not examined by any 

 one. A fruit-gi-ower here, in derision of my 

 oiiinion, handed me two rotten apples and asked 

 if they were bitten ; I shi)\\ed him that there 

 was more than one bile mark on each of them. 



though these marks were somewhat obscured by 

 the rot which ensued. I suppose this brown 

 cricket (a chestnut-brown) when mature has the 

 wings lieculiar to its order ; but I think when I 

 have caught it, it has been wingless : it is easily 

 crushed, and not easily caught without crushing. 



[We shall be glad to receive specimens of the 

 cricket in question. It may be the Jumping 

 Cricket {Orocharis saltator, Uliler), which we 

 know to have the pernicious habit of severing 

 gi'een grapes from their stems, and thus allowing 

 them to fall upon the ground. We are well 

 aware that the bite or puncture of any insect 

 will induce rot in the fruits mentioned, when 

 other conditions are favorable; and this fact 

 only confirms our opinion, as expressed on page 

 137, that the puncture of the Plimi Curculio has 

 no special or peculiarly poisonous efl'ect, and that 

 it caimot be the sole cause of the Peach rot, as 

 some persons contend it is. — Ed.] 



Clover-worms — Eureka, Mo., April 21, "70. — 

 I am very thankftil for your answer about the 

 Clover-woi-m ; but I have yet a little curiosity 

 to know how the worm gets into, or why it 

 chooses the center and bottom of the stack. Mr. 

 Walsh's supposition (Pract. Ent., I, p. 83) can- 

 not be correct, for my stack was on a new found- 

 ation, and at least two hundred yards away fi-om 

 any previous staeldug place. G. Pauls. 



[In the Prairie Farmer of April 20th, 1867, 

 we have shown that Mr. Walsh was wrong in 

 supposing that this worm can only increase 

 prodigiously where clover has been stacked for 

 successive years in the same place; and we have 

 also demonstrated that the principal reason why 

 they are so generally found at the bottom of a 

 stack in winter, is, that they are attracted there 

 for warmth and moisture. — Ed.] 



Flat-Headed Apple-tree Borer — Eureka, 

 Mo., April 21, 1870.— Last ttill, and early this 

 spring, and even quite recently, I found on my 

 apple trees small specimens of Chtysobothris 

 femorata, about one-quarter inch long, or just of 

 the size which the main crop has acquired in the 

 month of August. I can only conclude that the 

 eggs were either laid late in the fall, or tliat the 

 annual soft-soaping in May so weakens the con- 

 stitution of the larva that it cannot mature in 

 the proper season. I have had but three borers 

 escape my notice and get large enough to go into 

 the wood, or body of the tree, and in every in- 

 stance they penetrated in a straight or horizontal 

 direction, for about one to one and a half inches, 

 and then downwards. I fully indorse Mr. Wie- 

 landy's article on borers, in No. .5; especially 

 what he says about the general fate of a^iple trees 



