THE APPLE MAGGOT (Rhagoletis pomonella.) 

 Edith M. Patch and W. M. Munson. 



In acknowledgement of, if not in answer to, the appeals for 

 help against the apple maggot, a consideration of this insect 

 seems again to be due. The life history of the apple maggot is 

 well enough ascertained so that the fight against it can be intelli- 

 gently carried on ; and an attempt has been made in this paper 

 simply to bring together such known facts in the life of the pest 

 as have a bearing on the means of combating it. The statements 

 are based in the main upon the investigations recorded in the 

 Monograph on The Apple Maggot ( 1888- 1889) by the late Pro- 

 fessor F. L. Harvey.* Independent observations of the 

 advanced larval and early pupal stages have been made, but inas- 

 much as they serve merely to confirm what has already been 

 done, they are for the most part suppressed. 



It has not seemed necessary to restate the detailed work which 

 led to a knowledge of the facts here given. Fifteen years have 

 not brought about any apparent change in the insect. When it 

 was first described for Maine, the apple maggot preferred the 

 softer fall varieties, but was capable of developing in hard win- 

 ter ones ; and it has lost meanwhile neither the preference nor the 

 capability. The apple maggot has of late changed its generic 

 name, but since the transformation has not entered into the 

 nature of the pest, the same things which were true for Trypeta 

 pomonella still hold for Rhagoletis pomonella. 



DESCRIPTION. 



Egg- 

 The light yellow eggs are fusiform and about four times as 

 long as broad, measuring in length from .8 to .9 mm. and in 

 breadth about ■ .2. mm. At the end left nearest the surface of 

 the apple, the egg has a little stalk or pedicel. The ovaries fill 

 most of the abdominal cavity of the female fly. Each side con- 

 tains twenty-four chains of eggs, each chain having at least 

 seven eggs in different stages of development. 



* Report this station for 1889, pp. 190-241. 

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