368 



DISEASES AND INSECTS. 



directions, sometimes completely girdling it. The most 

 effectual method to destroy them is, to insert the end of a 

 wire into their bm-rQW, and killing them. The same 

 means are taken to guard against them as against the 

 peacli tree grub, viz., placing a mound of ashes around 

 the base of the trunk in the spring, and allowing it to 

 remain until after the season in which the beetles deposit 

 their eggs. It prevents them from reaching the soft bark 

 at the surface of the ground, the place usually selected. 

 It is stated in Downing's Fruit and Fruit Trees, that " the 

 beetles may be destroyed in June by building small fires 

 of shavings in difierent parts of the orchard." 



5. The Ajpj^le Worm. — ^The apple moth deposits its 

 eggs in the eye or calyx of the young fruit; the grub is 

 there hatched, and eats its way into the fruit, leaving be- 

 hind it a brownish powder. Sometimes the apples drop 

 l)efore they are half grown, and occasionally remain until 

 they acquire a premature ripeness. Early apples are more 

 affected, generally, than late ones, probably because in a 

 more forward state when the eggs are deposited. 



When the fruit falls the grub immediately leaves, pre^ 

 pares itself a place in some crevice of the bark of the tree* 

 and spins a thin paper-like cocoon, in which it spends the 

 winter, to cofne out the following spring and reproduce it- 

 self. There are but two ways of destroying them ; one is, 

 at pruning time in March, to search carefully for the 

 cocoons and destroy them, and the other is to pick up 

 promptly all fallen wormy fruits and destroy them. These 

 two means, industriously followed, will greatly diminish 

 the amount of wormy fruit, the increase of which is excit- 

 ing alarm. 



6. The CanJcer Worm. — This insect is confined chiefly 

 to l^ew England ; we have never seen it in IsTew York. 



They generally emerge from the ground in March. 

 According to Professor Harris, some rise during the late 



