SPECIAL REPORT FOR YEAR I914. 23 



pest to a minimum for years to come. Concerted action of this 

 sort, however, is not an easy matter to bring about and if a direct 

 remedy can be recommended to those who are interested enough 

 in their fruit to take care of it, the present distressing situation 

 will be relieved. 



Another treatment which has been suggested is the laborious 

 one of removing about three inches of soil from beneath bushes 

 which had been infested, replacing this with fresh soil, and then 

 treating the infested soil containing the puparia, in such a way 

 that when the flies mature they cannot emerge, or by burying 

 the infested soil deep enough so that the flies cannot emerge, or 

 by depositing the infested soil in a road where the pupae would 

 be destroyed. The destruction of the pupae in the infested soil 

 by the different methods suggested were put to an experimental 

 test. About a dozen different methods of treating the infested 

 soil without removing it from beneath the bushes were included 

 in the tests made on a farm near Orono. 



It has been found that certain other fruit flies, after issuing 

 from the pupae, require two weeks or more before the egg-lay- 

 ing period begins. This period is a feeding period and during 

 this time the insect flies about seeking food, such as the waxy 

 coating of fruit, juices or injured fruit or infested fallen fruit 

 on the ground, nectar of flowers, moisture on the leaves, etc. 

 The greediness of the flies for sweets is a weak point in the lift 

 history of these pests and one can readily understand that if 

 this sweet is poisoned and is within easy reach of the flies with 

 their first appearance on the wing, no doubt large numbers would 

 be killed in the two weeks or more before the egg-laying period 

 commences. The problem to be worked out, then, is to ascertain 

 what sweet, cheap enough to be economically available, will 

 attract the currant or gooseberry fruit fly sufliciently to feed 

 upon the poisoned bait. 



Comparatively little work with poisoned bait for controlling 

 fruit flies has been done in the United States but in some other 

 parts of the world this method has been in use for several years. 

 In South Africa a decisive demonstration of the success of pois- 

 oned diluted molasses to combat the Mediterranean fruit fly was 

 made in the season of 1908-9. "A severe outbreak of this fruit 

 fly in a commercial peach orchard was brought to a sudden and 

 practically complete halt, and the fruit maturing later was 



