THE AMERICAN ENTOMOLOGIST. 



125 



Apple Worm Traps. — It is quite un- 

 necessary in order to successfully fight the 

 Codling Moth, that we have the bands with 

 the latest date of the patent office on them. 

 During the past season I applied iron 

 bands to some apple trees and found that 

 the larva of the Codling Moth {Carpocapsa 

 pomonella) had no preference between an 

 iron bedstead without mattress of any kind, 

 and one made of soft leather or paper with 

 the softest of woolen or cotton mattress in 

 which to slumber. In other words, the 

 larva of the Codling Moth can be entrapped 

 under the simplest and cheapest band, be 

 it made of paper, cloth, or leather, so long 

 as the bark of the tree is kept smooth and 

 no sticks or fences are near. — Chas. D. 

 Zimmermann. 



Value of an Entomological Maga- 

 zine TO Fruit-growers. — Every bee- 

 keeper who wishes to know what is going 

 on in the bee world takes a paper devoted 

 to bees, of course. A breeder of fine cat- 

 tle can't do without the Live Stock Journal. 

 The gardener or nurseryman must have the 

 Gardeners' Monthly or else he is behind the 

 times. Now why do we fruit-growers grope 

 about as with a smoky lantern for remedies 

 for insects, sure to pick up some self- 

 acting " sure cure " for the Curculio or 

 other pest, that some editor invented to fill 

 up his columns. Why not take a paper on 

 the subject that will give us sound advice 

 (no patent-medicine remedies), and whose 

 editor will be glad to receive specimens of 

 troublesome insects, give us the name and 

 a remedy. Is the subject not of enough 

 importance ? 



When a thief steals a peck of apples 

 (value about loc), some of us will invest 

 from SS-oo to $25.00 for lawyer's advice, 

 etc., how best to capture the thief. But 

 when the Codling Moth breaks into our 

 orchards and destroys from one-fourth to 

 one-half of our crop, we are not willing to 

 give an entomological lawyer $2.00 a year 

 to keep us posted as to how best to fight the 

 insect thieves. — Chas. D. Zimmermann, be- 

 fore the Western New York Horticultural 

 Society. 



The Proboscis of the common House- 

 fly. — There have been published a good 

 many descriptions of this organ, some of 

 them illustrated by drawings under the 

 microscope, more or less coarse and inac- 

 curate. It is a pleasure to read so thorough 

 a paper on the subject as that by Prof. 

 Macloskie in the March number of the 

 American Naturalist. He finds that there 

 is formed a set of teeth on the circum-oral 

 rods and intervening between the roots of 

 the false tracheae. In some species he finds 

 three rows of these teeth, each tooth two- 

 cusped, while others have but one row, 

 each tooth being three-cusped, and suggests 

 that these differences are of generic value, 

 a suggestion, however, which we think will 

 not meet with much following. He shows 

 pretty conclusively that the suggestion, 

 made nearly a century ago by Gleichen but 

 generally rejected, that inflation is used to 

 protrude the proboscis in addition to muscu- 

 lar action, is correct, the protrusion and dis- 

 tension being a joint affair, the tracheal sys- 

 tem and the muscles combining in the work. 



In searching for the homologies of the 

 fulcrum of the proboscis he finds it in the 

 endocranium of the insects of other Orders, 

 and the endocranium of the Cockroach 

 shows that all the parts correspond exactly 

 with the retracted proboscis of the House- 

 fly. " We have thus," he concludes, " fallen 

 upon a modification of a structure depend- 

 ent on metamorphosis of function, almost 

 as striking as that which exists between 

 the suspensor of a bird's mandible and the 

 small bones of the human ear." 



Notes on South American Lepidop- 

 TERA. — At the February 6th meeting of 

 the London (Eng.) Entomological Society, 

 as reported in the Entomologists' Monthly 

 Magazine, Mr. Meldola read extracts from 

 a letter to Mr. Darwin from Dr. Fritz 

 Miiller, from Santa Catharina, Brazil, con- 

 cerning the habits, etc., of several South 

 American Lepidoptera. One of the Sphing- 

 idce in that locality had a proboscis (ex- 

 hibited) of 22 centimetres in length. An- 

 other species of the same family exhaled a 

 strong scent, which proceeded from, an 



