[133] 



Report of the State Entomologist. 



275 



Attack on Young Pears by a Plant-bug. 



Messrs. Ellwanger & Barry, of the Mount Hope Nurseries at 

 Bochester, N. Y., have sent me under date of June 19, 1884, some 

 specimens of young pears, blotched and injured, together with 

 insects taken upon them. 



Some of the pears, of about one-half inch in diameter, show as many 

 as forty blotches from an eighth of an inch in diameter downward. 

 From the minute puncture originally made, the juice as it has escaped 

 has become hardened and granulated, and with its increase has split 

 the skin in different directions, often in a triangular form or one 

 wound running into another. The more seriously injured pears 

 would be rendered unfit for sale from their knotted surface, even if 

 after such a drain upon them they should continue upon the tree, 

 which is not at all probable. 



The insects taken upon the injured fruit were the tarnished plant- 

 bug, Lygus pratensis (Linn.). Although they were not actually 

 observed feeding upon the juices, there can be no 

 reasonable doubt of their being the authors of the 

 injury. This form of attack (upon the fruit) has 

 not been previously recorded, yet their fondness 

 for the blossoms of the pear is known, and they 

 are also known to be destructive to the fruit of the 

 strawberry. 



In the attack above recorded, the insect has 

 apparently shown a preference in the variety of 

 pear it has selected. Messrs. Ellwanger & Barry ni ^' d pi^bu K ^- 

 write : " The whole of the fruit in one of our gus pbatensis. 

 orchards on the Duchesse d'Angouleme trees is affected; while on the 

 Beurre d'Anjou and other varieties, we find nothing of the kind." 



In the American Entomologist, ii, 1870, and in the First Report on the 

 Insects of New York, 1882, statement is made of a pear orchard having 

 been saved from the destruction of its blossom buds by this insect, by 

 shaking them from the branches into a vessel of soap-suds, for three 

 successive mornings. If equally effective in other instances of attack, it 

 will prove a valuable remedy, for its control is often quite difficult, if 

 not impossible. 



This destructive plant-bug, of wide distribution over the United 

 States, and of very injurious habits from its broad range of food- 

 plants, has long been known as Lygus lineolaris Pal. Beauv., and has 

 been but recently referred to the species described as pratensis by 

 Linnseus. 



