86 



INSECTS. 



None of our fruits are more liable than the apple to 

 the depredations of insects. They assail all its parts 

 —blossom, leaves, stem, and root — and they are con- 

 fined to no season, for some one or other of them 

 may be found at its work of destruction whenever the 

 scrutiny takes place. 



So impressed was Mr. Knight with the opinion 

 that of all our fruits none suffers more from insects 

 than the apple, that he declared his belief that these 

 are a more frequent cause of the crops failing than 

 frost. The figure-of-eight moth (Episema caruleoce- 

 phala), Linne denominates the pest of Pemona, and 

 the destroyer of the blossoms of the apple, pear, and 

 cherry. He also mentions another (Tinea corticella) 

 as inhabiting apple-bearing trees under the bark. 

 And Reaumur has given us the history of a species 

 common in this country, and producing the same 

 effect, often to the destruction of the crop, the cater- 

 pillar of which feeds in the centre of our apples, thus 

 occasioning them to fall. Even the young grafts are 

 frequently destroyed, sometimes many hundreds in 

 one night, in the nurseries about London, by the 

 Curculio Vast at or of Marsh (Otiorhynchus picipes), 

 one of the short-snouted weevils ; and the foundation 

 of canker in full-grown trees is often laid by the larvae 



