INSECT NOTES. 265 



If the well known and constantly recommended remedial 

 measures against orchard insects of Maine were to he applied 

 in good earnest, the standard apple insect pests of Maine would 

 diminish in a wholesale and satisfactory degree. And this is 

 a matter that rests with the owners of trees. Merely by way 

 of comment it might be stated that in certain localities where 

 it has been known for 15 years or more that the apple maggot 

 (or "railroad worm") must be fought by the destruction of 

 infested fruit, it is not unusual to hear some such remark as 

 "Now, there's that high top sweeting. I haven't had an apple 

 to eat from that tree for five years. The railroad worm gets 

 them all." And while season after season the* infested fruit is 

 permitted to lie and rot undisturbed upon untilled sod beneath 

 the tree, the railroad worm is actually blamed for continuing to 

 breed in conditions rendered ideal for that very purpose. The 

 full humor of the situation is forthcoming when the owner of 

 the high top sweeting complains of his neighbor for rearing 

 curculios in his apples "to infest all the apples in the vicinity," 

 though just what difference it makes whether the railroad worm 

 or the curculio gets the fruit is not apparent. However, merely 

 by way of interesting information the neighbor's attention is 

 called to Fig. 35, which presents a curculioed apple. If raisers 

 of such deformed fruit would pasture their orchards with hogs 

 they would destroy the curculios which are a menace to the 

 neighborhood and incidentally some of the descendants of the 

 railroad worms which have migrated from the high top sweet- 

 ing across the way. 



Grasshoppers. 

 The summer of. 1907 has been conspicuously a grasshopper 

 season. Many species were more abundant than usual, but the 

 red-legged locust, Melanoplus femur-rubrum, was, so far as 

 observed, guilty of most of the serious trouble. They were 

 present over a large part of the State all summer in trouble- 

 some numbers, but most of the complaints were made in August 

 after the grass was harvested, when they were to be started up 

 in clouds. Potato fields, large orchards, raspberry and blue- 

 berry bushes, as well as a great variety of other vegetation 

 suffered. The "Carolina locust," Dissosteira Carolina, was very 

 common, but this species together with many other of the grass- 



