THE LESSER PEACH BORER. 33 
peach and apparent preference for this tree over others hitherto 
chosen, Quintance proposed for it the name of the lesser peach borer, 
in distinction from. the better known peach borer Sanninoidea 
exitiosa Say. This name seems preferable to any of the others, and 
more logical, because the peach is the most important food plant 
which it attacks at the present time. 
FOOD PLANTS; CHARACTER AND EXTENT OF INJURY. 
It has already been indicated that the lesser peach borer has more 
than one food plant, a habit usual with the members of the family 
to which it belongs. Bailey, in 1879, first found it on the cultivated 
plum. Two years later, in 1881, Kellicott found it attacking old plum 
trees at Buffalo, N. Y., and also wild cherries (Prunus serotinus and 
P. pennsylvanicus). In 1891 the same author stated that, in addi- 
tion to its favorite food plant, it also attacked wild black and red 
cherries at Columbus, Ohio, and very probably would be found on 
the cultivated cherry. Again the following year (1892) he briefly 
states that it attacks both cultivated and wild cherry in the same 
locality of Ohio. In 1893 Webster reared the insect from the 
black-knot fungus, Plowrightia morbosa, on cherry and plum. 
Beutenmiilier (1896), three years later, gave two additional food 
plants, juneberry (Amelanchier canadensis) and the beach plum 
- (Prunus maritima). During the same year Webster (1896) recorded 
it on peach. Beutenmiiller (1897) then added chestnut, and in 
1899 Lugger added wild plum, making the following known food 
plants to date: Cultivated and wild plums and cherries, black-knot 
fungus on plum and cherry, juneberry, beach plum, chestnut, and 
peach. 
Recent records of this Bureau show that this borer has a decided 
preference for peach. For instance, in Georgia where large plum 
and: peach orchards are grown side by side, an examination of each 
kind of tree showed that it was common on the latter and scarce on 
the former. We have been unable to find it numerous on wild plum 
and cherry in that State, nor have additional food plants been found. 
In Maryland we have found the larva in a knotty growth on peach 
some 5 feet above the ground. Mr. W. F. Fiske, of this Bureau, 
reared adults from girdled chestnut trees (Castanea dentauta), at 
Tryon, N. C., May 28, 1904. 
The insect is evidently increasing on peach, and at present in cer- 
tain localities causes costly and, in the case of individual trees, fatal 
injury. Bailey (1879) records a fatal attack on a plum tree in New 
York; and as an example of such concentrated attacks on individ- 
ual trees in orchards mention may be made of the case of a nearly 
girdled 3-year-old Greensboro peach tree in Georgia, from the slender 
