134 



INSECTS INJURIOUS TO THE APPLE. 



those which the female makes for her eggs are scooped out 

 still more broadly, and the egg is placed at the bottom. The 

 egg is of a yellowish color, and in shape a long oval, being 

 about one-twenty-iifth of an inch in length and not quite half 

 that in width. As soon as the larva hatches, it burrows to 

 the heart of the fruit, where it feeds around the core, which 

 becomes partly filled with rust-red excrement. In about a 

 month it attains full size, when it presents the appearance 

 shown in Fig. 142 ; b represents the larva highly magnified, 

 and a the chrysalis. 



The larva, is a soft, white grub, nearly half an inch in 

 length, with a yellowish-brown head and jaws. Its body is 



much wrinkled, the spaces 

 ^^* ^^^' between the folds being of 



a bluish-black color ; there is 

 also a line of a bluish shade 

 down the back. Having 

 no legs, it is incapable of 

 much movement, and re- 

 mains within the fruit it oc- 

 cupies, changing there to a 

 chrysalis of a whitish color 

 (see Fig. 142 a), and in two or three weeks, when perfected, 

 the beetle cuts a hole through the fruit and escapes. 



When feeding, this insert makes a number of holes or 

 punctures, and around these a hard knot or swelling forms, 

 which much disfigures the fruit ; pears, as well as apples, are 

 injured in this way. The infested fruits do not usually fall 

 to the ground, as do apples affected by the codling worm, but 

 remain attached to the tree, and the insect, from its habit 

 of living within the fruit through all its stages, is a difficult 

 one to destroy. Picking the affected specimens from the 

 tree, and vigorously jarring the tree during the time when 

 the beetle is about, will bring it to the ground, where it can 

 be destroyed in the same manner as recommended for the 

 plum curculio. Fortunately, it is seldom found in such 



