INDIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 169 



perforates the shell when young and soft, and deposits an 

 egg in the orifice. In France it sometimes happens, when 

 the chestnuts promise an abundant crop, that the fruit 

 falls before it comes to maturity, scarcely any remaining 

 upon the trees. The caterpillar of a moth which eats into its 

 interior is the cause of this disappointment.^ Of fruits the 

 date has the hardest nucleus ; yet an insect of the same tribe 

 with the above, that feeds uj^on its kernel, is armed with jaws 

 sufficiently strong to perforate it, that it may make its escape 

 when the time of its change is arrived, and assume the pupa 

 between the stone and the flesh. And another moth, the 

 Pyralis brunnea, feeds on the pulp of the fruit, and there un- 

 dergoes its metamorphosis.^ The date is eaten also by a beetle 

 which Hasselquist calls a Dermestes.^ — Another foreign fruit, 

 the tamarind, has its stone, which is nearly as hard as that of 

 the date, attacked by a weevil of the same genus as the corn- 

 weevil, of which, in the larva state, sometimes as many as 

 forty are found in a single stone.* The pomegranate, in the 

 East Indies, has its interior eaten by the caterpillar of the 

 hair-streak butterfly {Tliecla Isocrates), of whose economy 

 Mr. Westwood has given so interesting an account.^ 



In these last-named fruits, however, we have a far slighter 

 interest than in another of our imported ones, the orange, of 

 which, in 1841 (including lemons), we consumed upwards of 

 302,000 chests, paying a gross duty of 63,975/., and which 

 may be regarded as the most valuable of the whole, combining 

 a highly intrinsic excellence, with a price which brings it 

 within the reach of all. It appears, however, from the in- 

 teresting and important facts stated by W. S. MacLeay, Esq. 

 that we might have oranges still cheaper, were it not for a 

 Y\t\\Q^j (^Ceratitis citriperda), which lays its eggs in them before 

 their shipment from the Azores, and the grubs subsequently 

 disclosed often so greatly injure them, that the orange mer- 

 chants calculate on losing one third of their average importa- 

 tions, and of course reimburse themselves by a proportionate 

 advance of the price to the consumers.^ 



1 Reaum. ii. 505. ^ Guerin-Meneville, Revue Zoolog. 1841, p. 246. 



3 Ibid. ii. 507. and Hasselquist's Travels in the Levant, 428. 



4 Christy, in Trans. Ent. Soc. Lond. i. ^ Ibid. ii. 1. 



6 Zoological Journ. iv. 475. This fly, v/hich Dr. Heineken states is coininon 



