30 
FIRST ANNUAL REPORT OF THE 
in the Natural History of which we have just been investigating some few points. In 
Massachusetts, in Connecticut, in New York, and probably in Vermont also, it has for 
the last few years been troubled, in addition, by a still more destructive pest, popularly 
known as “the Apple-maggot.” The Apple-worm is an imported species, probably 
introduced into the Eastern States from Europe about the commencement of the 
present century, and has only penetrated into Illinois within the last ten or fifteen years. 
The Apple-maggot, on the contrary, is a native-American species, which naturally feeds 
upon our native haws or thorn-apples and probably upon our native crabs also, and 
which I know to have existed in the State of Illinois for at least five or six years.* In 
the Eastern States, from unexplained causes, it has within the last few years acquired 
the habit of attacking the cultivated apple, as well as the wild haw, and has, by the 
laws of inheritance, transmitted that habit to its descendants, who have reveled in the 
foreign delicacy, and increased and multiplied at a prodigious rate, till they have be¬ 
come almost an unbearable nuisance. In Illinois, on the contrary, so far as I can learn, 
the species has never yet acquired this peculiar habit, and perhaps may never do so. 
But there can be little doubt that the descendants of the improved and highly-civilized 
apple-maggots in the East will, in process of time and by slow degrees, spread gradually to 
the West; or they may be suddenly introduced in a barrel of Eastern apples into some 
point at the West, and thence radiate in all directions and colonize the country. What 
is very remarkable, the species is new to science, and was briefly described by myself for 
the first time in the American Journal of Horticulture for December, 1807 (pp. 338—343.) 
How I obtained the requisite facilities for investigating its history, and what is its 
peculiar mode of operating upon the apple-crop in the East, I will now proceed to 
explain. 
The following paragraph appeared in the Circular of the Oneida Community (Nov. 12, 
I860,) published at Wallingford, Connecticut; and shortly afterwards, at my request, 
the Editor was kind enough to send me several specimens of the larvae. 
“ Two months ago we were congratulating ourselves on a fair crop of winter apples. 
To all appearance they were freer from worms than we had known them in this section 
for years. But alas! our hopes are again blasted. Although the apple-worm (the larva 
of the Codling Moth, Carpocapsa pomOnella) is not so numerous as in some seasons, the 
apple maggot seems to be as prolific as ever. Two weeks ago we overhauled two hun¬ 
dred and fifty bushels of apples, that we had gathered and placed in store for winter use, 
and of that number we threw out fifty bushels, most of which had been rendered worth¬ 
less, except for cider or hogs, by one or the other of the above-named insects ; and 
still the work of destruction goes on. The apple-icorm by this time has ceased his work, 
or nearly so , but the depredations of the ap>ple maggot continue up to the present time, 
converting the pulp of the apple into a mere honeycomb, and rendering another over¬ 
hauling soon indispensable.” 
I hope cider-drinkers will make a note of the fact that maggoty apples can be con¬ 
verted into excellent cider. They would probably not like to eat the maggots bodily ; 
but they smack their lips after drinking the expressed juice of millions of these tender 
* The scientific reader will, perhaps, like to know that, after I had published in the Journal of Hor¬ 
ticulture the fact, that the species bred by myself five or six years ago, from Illinois haws, was identical 
with that bred in 1866-7 from apples received from the East, I sent a specimen of the former to Baron 
Osten Sacken, and he found it to be undistinguishable from a specimen of the latter which I had 
previously sent him. 
