50 



THE ORCHABD AKD PRUIT aARDElS". 



another Acarus, is distinguislied by its scarlet colour, 

 and others infest various plants in our gardens. 



The Psylla, or Chermes, is something like a large 

 aphis. P. pyri is often to be found on pear trees, and 

 occaj=jionally on the apple. It appears in May, like 

 a crimson aphis, shaded with black. The eggs, re- 

 sembling the pollen of a flower, are laid in great 

 numbers on the young leaves, flowers, and newly formed 

 fruit. As the insects grow, they become darker, reddish 

 on the breast, something like bugs in appearance, and 

 travel downwards to the bearing wood and shoots of 

 the year before, where they fix themselves in rows. 

 Before the last change they fix themselves singly to 

 leaves, and change to the winged insect, which is of 

 a beautiful green, with red eyes and perfectly white 

 wings. After a few days, the colour partly changes to 

 orange, and the fly takes to the wing. The apple 

 thermes, P. mali^ appears later. The eggs are first 

 white, afterwards yellow, rather pointed at both ends, 

 and often arranged in an exact pattern. It destroys 

 the buds, and is diff'erent in appearance from the pear 

 thermes, but the winged insect is equally beautiful. 

 For all (one attacks the fig) on fruit trees, camelias, 

 or roses, syringe with tobacco-water first, and after- 

 wards with pure water. 



The saw-fly, Selandria Etliiops, or the shiny grub, 

 so called on account of a dark slimy matter which 

 covers the body, chiefly attacks pear trees, but is some- 

 times found on the cherry. The grub is about half an 

 inch long, dark, from the slimy black-green fluid en- 

 veloping it, and larger near the head than at the other 

 end. In October it changes to a brown cocoon, and in 

 June or July becomes the winged insect, a shiny black 

 fly, with yellowish tips to the legs, about the third of 

 an inch across the extended wings. The eggs are de- 

 posited on the upper surface of the leaves. 



Caterpillars are many of them most destructive to 

 our fruit trees, occasionally making a clean gweep of 

 all the leaves on a tree. The magpie moth, a yello^Yish- 

 white flat moth, with a little orange, measuring about 



