66 ENTOMOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF ONTARIO. 



At the end of October Dr. Young sent me some apples containing a few larvae and 

 showing undoubtedly the work of this injurious insect which he had never found in his 

 orchard before this season. Three or four varieties only of apples were infested. It is 

 important to notify fruit growers as soon as possible of the occurrence of this insect in 

 our orchards as an apple pest and to give from the experience of growers in the New Eng- 

 land States the measures which have been found most successful in fighting against it. 

 The insect was first described by Walsh in his first report as State Entomologist of Illi- 

 nois in 1868 ; but it had been known in the eastern states for several years before that, 

 having attracted attention by its serious injuries to the cultivated apples in New York, 

 Massachusetts, Connecticut and Vermont. Strange to say, although it has never, as far 

 as I can learn, attacked cultivated apples in Canada until this year, it ia common in 

 collections of insects and occurs abundantly in the fruit of hawthorn in many localities. 

 In 1887 I bred the fly from haws found at London, Hamilton, Toronto, Montreal and 

 Ottawa. In 1888 the fruit of the hawthorn bushes on the Experimental Farm was so 

 much infested by the maggot of this fly and the grub of the apple curculio that it was 

 almost impossible to find a sound fruit. It is, however, by no means a singular habit for 

 an insect to confine itself to a certain food plant in one locality when others are growing 

 close to it, which elsewhere are preferred by the same species. 



The most important articles on this subject have been written by Walsh (111. Rep. I.), 

 Oomstock (Rep. U. S. Oomm. Agric, 1881-2), and particularly Prof. Harvey, who wrote 

 a, lone and complete account in the annual report of the Maine Agricultural Experiment 

 Station for 1889, where the full life history of the species is for the first time detailed. 

 The life of this insect may be said to be as follows : The perfect flies begin to emerge 

 about the first of July and continue to appear until about the middle of September ; eggs 

 are laid at once those first deposited producing the earliest flies the following season. The 

 eg<* is forced through the skin of forming apples by means of the horny ovipositor of the 

 females. The maggots hatch and run tunnels all through the fruit of the apple leaving 

 discolored brown tracks wherever they go. In this way the fruit is rendered quite unsale- 

 able and ripens prematurely. The maggots are full grown in about five or six weeks, 

 and as soon as the fruit falls they leave it and entering the ground a short way turn to 

 puparia and in that condition pass the winter. Early and sub acid varieties of apples 

 seem to be preferred, but late and winter varieties are also attacked. When the late varieties 

 are infested the maggots do not emerge until sometime during the winter after the fruit 

 has been stored. In all Prof. Harvey's investigations he never saw an apple hanging on 

 the tree from which the maggots had emerged. This is an important point because it 

 shows the value of collecting all fallen fruit as soon as possible after it falls and destroying 

 it so that the maggots may not leave and go into the ground to pupate. There are different 

 ways by which this may be done. They may be collected by children and fed to stock, 

 or if there is no stock to eat them, they may be buried in a deep hole and afterwards 

 covered up so that the flies may not be able to emerge the following season. Sheep or 

 swine kept in the orchard from about the 15th July would save much labor by eating 

 the fruit as soon as it fell to the ground, and poultry would render good service by devour- 

 in<* the fruit, maggots and puparia beneath the trees. The larvre do not penetrate more 

 than an inch or an inch and a half beneath the surface, so would easily be scratched out 

 and found by chickens. Prof. Harvey draws attention to some important facts in the 

 habits of the apple maggots. He points out that the perfect insects are rather sluggish 

 and that the species does not eeem to spread very rapidly in a new locality from orchard 

 to orchard nor even from tree to tree in an orchard. He shows clearly, however, that it 

 is a most serious pest from the way in which infested fruit is rendered quite useless for 

 human food. The females are very prolific, each one laying from 300 to 400 eggs, and 

 the young mttggots hatching inside the apples are inaccessible to any wholesale method 

 of treatment such as spraying. Up to the present no parasites have been detected feed- 

 in<* on the insect. Almost all varieties of apples are liable to attack and as many as a 

 dozen maggots have been found in a single fruit. Under remedies, he says, " The only 

 chances are to destroy the larvae and pupa?. The larvoe are found abundantly in wind- 

 falls, and the pupa? in bins and barrels where fruit has been stored. Destroying wind- 



