Packard ] THE POPULATION OP AN APPLE TREE. 163 
ground. The Cicada also at times breaks off the twigs of 
the apple in laying its eggs in them. 
INFESTING THE TRUNK OF THE TREE. 
The Apple Tree Borer .— It is not particular^ creditable 
to our fruit growers that the apple tree borer still maintains 
such a sway in our orchards, and that we pay an annual 
tribute of trees and apples which, were its value set forth in 
figures, would appall the orchardist. The borer is the most 
widely extended and wholesale in its destruction of all the 
insects which prey upon the apple. The canker worm is 
local, and even then less injurious, taking only the leaves 
and apples, but leaving the trees. So with the tent cater¬ 
pillar and bud worm; but the “borer” has almost finished 
its work of destruction and the tree is doomed, ere we have 
read its death-warrant. The history of this beetle is as fol¬ 
lows : during the night and sometimes in the hottest days of 
the first week of July, in New England, and in May and June 
in the western states, the female beetle flies around the trunk 
of the tree, and during this period she deposits her eggs in 
the bark near the root of the tree. How many eggs she 
lays at one time is not known, but she deposits “one egg in 
a place upon the bark, low down, at or very near the surface 
of the earth ; but when these beetles are numerous, some of 
their eggs are placed higher up, particularly in the axils 
where the lower limbs proceed from the trunk” (Fitch). 
About a fortnight after the eggs are laid the young grub 
hatches, and immediately begins to eat its way upwards 
(according to Harris) or downwards (according to Fitch). 
This grub is a little footless white worm, with the segment 
next to the head large and thick, and only differs in size 
from the fully grown worm (Fig. 129; b , pupa; c, beetle, 
after Riley). Says Dr. Fitch, “If the outer dark colored 
surface of the bark be scraped off with a knife the last of 
August or forepart of September, so as to expose the clean 
3 *\ 
