PEAR AND APPLE TREES ATTACKED. 41 



all the mountain ash . . . trees were entirely killed," and Dr. A. K. 

 Fisher reports that sapsuckers killed a large mountain ash near 

 Ossining, N. Y. 



Pear (Pyrus communis). — Hoy (1865) states that this species is 

 attacked by the sapsucker, and J. M. Thompson says the pear is "one 

 of its principal food trees." 



Olive-leaved pear (Pyrus elseagnifolia) . — Department of Agricul- 

 ture grounds, District of Columbia. 



Crab apple (Malus angustifolia) . — South Carolina (A. A. and 

 A. M. 240). 



Crab apple (Malus baccata). — Widmann (see Bendire) says this 

 species is occasionally punctured, and Horsford states that "the sour 

 puckery crab apple seldom escapes." He also figures a crab apple 

 tree which was killed by yellow-bellied sapsuckers. 



Crab apple (Malus coronaria). — Nazareth, Pa. (A. M. 239). 



Apple (Malus malus). — Everywhere in the United States, appar- 

 ently, apple trees are subject to sapsucker attack (see PL V, fig. 3). 

 The writer has noticed abundant sapsucker work on trees in Massa- 

 chusetts, Maryland, the District of Columbia, and Virginia. Near 

 Afton, Va., fully 90 per cent of the trees in an orchard of 40 acres had 

 been pecked profusely. The apple tree is attacked in Indiana and in 

 West Virginia (Hopkins) and many other places mentioned in the 

 following notes, often with fatal results. Bendire says the sap- 

 sucker "materially injures and eventually kills many . . . trees. 

 In southern Utah ... it is said to do considerable damage to 

 orchards in the early spring and again in fall, tapping the . . . apple 

 trees for sap." Horsford says: 



This is the most destructive bird in our climate. I have seen the best trees in an 

 apple orchard destroyed. . . . Where the bird breeds, whole orchards are severely- 

 injured, if not destroyed, by them. . . . The flow of sap is so diminished that the 

 leaves fade and the fruit withers on the stem or falls to the ground . Perhaps not half 

 the apple trees attacked are killed outright. The injury is ... in every possible 

 degree, from the round "gimlet hole," which is not fatal, to the broad "countersink, " 

 which kills the branch or the whole tree. 



Garfield notes that "an apple tree badly pecked ceases to bear for 

 several years." Clifford states that they "do great damage to the 

 apple trees . . . sometimes girdling them so as to kill them entirely," 

 and George H. Selover writes: " The yellow-bellied woodpeckers . . . 

 have been noticed very often in the act of picking through the bark 

 of apple trees, and quite often have destroyed the trees" (Lake City, 

 Minn., 1885). 



Crab apple (Malus diversifolia) . — Oregon (A. M. 238). 



California holly (Heteromeles arbutifolia) . — A trunk collected in 

 California is much deformed. One almost complete girdle of punc- 

 tures retains the characteristic appearance, while elsewhere there are 



