54 



mode of application and the general treatment are the same for the plum curculio as for 

 the apple worm. He states at the outset that " to this codling moth we may fairly 

 attribute a loss to the farmers of Illinois of, say, four and three-quarters millions of 

 dollars each year." He then proceeds to shew, as the result of his experiments, that — 

 putting down the loss to one-half of the amount stated — " at least seven-tenths of that 

 loss may be prevented by a single remedial measure," viz., the application of Paris green, 

 as mentioned above. After giving an account of his experiments, Prof. Forbes states 

 that they show " that eighty-six per cent, of the apples which would have fallen from 

 codling moth injuries have been preserved from falling, and that fifty-nine per cent, of 

 the picked apples, which would have become wormy, remain uninjured ; or, taking all the 

 apples from these trees together and comparing with the entire crop of the check trees 

 (which had not been sprayed) we shall find that, of the apples thus exposed to damage, 

 almost exactly seventy per cent, have been saved by our treatment." This is certainly 

 eminently satisfactory. 



Experiments were also made as to the effect of spraying the trees once, twice or three 

 times, with this result : "The benefit to the picked fruit apparent from a single spraying, 

 stands at forty-seven per cent., and that from twice spraying at ninety per cent., while 

 that from thrice spraying falls away again to seventy-seven per cent. Or, summarizing 

 still more briefly, we may say, in general, that the results of once or twice spraying with 

 Paris green in early spring, before the young apples had drooped upon their stems, 

 resulted in a saving of about seventy-five per cent, of the apples exposed to injury by the 

 codling moth." It is most important to bear in mind that, in the case of apple trees 

 especially, the spraying must be done before the apples have begun to hang downward ; if 

 deferred till a later period there is positive danger that some of the poison will be retained 

 on the fruit and held in the cavity where neither wind nor I'ain can dislodge it. Enough 

 poison from careless treatment may thus be retained in the apples to be dangerous to the 

 health, if not to the life of the consumer. 



The use of this mode of prevention for the plum curculio has, we are glad to find, been 

 already tried in Ontario. Prof. Saunders, in his speech at the meeting of the Entomo- 

 logical Society at Ottawa in October, stated that he had in this way saved his own fruit, 

 and that the remedy had been found effective at Owen Sound and Goderich also. 



There is no doubt that the method of spraying with Paris green will be found 

 advantageous when applied for the destruction of the codling moth and plum curculio, 

 at the same time reducing very much the ravages of insects that devour the foliage of 

 these fruit trees, especially the tent caterpillars of the apple and many other destructive 

 worms. 



Currant Borers. 



There are two species of insects that prove injurious to the currant by boring into 

 the stems and rendering them hollow and weak, and in many cases causing their death. 

 Though similar in their operations, the two insects are utterly unlike, one being a moth 

 and the other a beetle. The moth is commonly called the Imported Ourrant-borer, 

 (jEyeria ti'puliformis, Linn) as, like so many others serious insect pests, it has come to us 

 from Europe. 



Fig. 8 represents the moth, a pretty wasp- 

 like creature, with a bluish-black body, crossed 

 by three narrow golden bands ; on the thorax and 

 at the base of the wings there are also streaks of 

 the same colour. The wings are transparent, 

 with veins and a bordering of brownish-black 

 . «* ^- °- with a coppery lustre. The female lays her eggs 



in June, singly, near the buds, where, in a few days, they hatch 

 into tiny caterpillars and eat their way into the centre of the 



stem. Here they burrow up and down through the pith until they have formed a 

 cavity of several inches in length. When fully grown the larva changes into a chrysalis 

 (Fig. 9 represents both caterpillar and chrysalis, much magnified), from which the 

 moth issues in the following: June. 



