58 MAINE AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMENT STATION. 



From these eggs hatch apple maggots which tunnel through 

 the pulp where they feed until full grown. The maggots are 

 small, plump, white objects without legs and with head so ill 

 defined that it is difficult to find it at all. The mouth parts are 

 reduced to a pair of rasping hooks. The apple maggot works 

 in soft discolored mushy trails anywhere in the pulp. The trails 

 of the apple maggot never contain little round sawdust-like 

 pellets. Often their tunnels lie directly beneath the skin of 

 the apple, showing through in the light colored varieties as dark 

 trailing tracks which have won for the apple maggot the pop- 

 ular name of railroad worm (fig. 44). But, though the mag- 

 got frequently comes near the surface of the apple, it never 

 breaks through the skin until it is through feeding and is thus 

 always protected, a circumstance which shows clearly that it is 

 of no use to try to destroy this pest by spraying. 



When the eggs are laid, the apples are young and hard and 

 for some time the maggots grow very slowly. At this stage 

 the tunnels are very inconspicuous and the maggots themselves 

 are not likely to be detected except by careful search. As the 

 apple matures, the maggot makes more and more headway and 

 is frequently full grown by the time the apple is ripe (fig. 43). 

 Moreover the presence of the maggots seem to hasten the devel- 

 opment of the apples and much of the infested fruit comes to 

 the ground as windfalls. This is the reason so much stress is 

 laid on the destruction of windfalls to get rid of the maggot. 

 ■ Since the flies are so long on the wing and lay their eggs 

 over such an extended time the full grown maggots are found 

 at different periods. The first eggs are laid naturally in the 

 early fruit and accordingly as soon as August tenth full grown 

 maggots have been recorded in Early Harvests. On the other 

 hand, some of the later maggots, from eggs laid in harder 

 winter varieties, do not acquire their full size until late in the 

 fall or winter. These are the maggots that are stored with 

 the fruit. 



The full grown maggots bore out of the windfalls and bury 

 themselves an inch or less in the ground. Or, if they are in 

 gathered fruit where they cannot find a suitable burying ground, 

 they creep away beneath some protecting object instead. Soon 

 after leaving the apple (sometimes the transformation takes 

 place within the apple but not often) the maggots shrink a little 



