The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1902-05-29
FARM AND
GARDEN ~
INTERESTS
The Cooling Moth.
New York Sun,

New York Sun.
Although it costs the farmers of New
York State one-third of their apple and
pear crop every year, said an entomolo-
gist, which means in money at least 5000
900, and that is less than one-eighth OF
what it costs the farmers and fruit growers
annually in the country at large, scarcely
one farmer or fruit grower in ten ever saw
a codling moth. Yet the insect during its
breeding season is busy by tens of thou
sands in every orchard.
The reason why the codling moth is
seen so rarely is that it alone among the
many varieties of moths has not the habit
of being attracted at night by light or
flame, and it has the faculty of secreting
itself so completely during the day that
the most violent disturbance of its retreat
does not cause ii to take wing or move
from it's lurking places in the orchard
trees, the rough scaly bark of which it so
closely resembles that even if one of the
insects were resting on the exterior of the
bark it would defy the sharpest of eyes to
detect.
A flaming torch placed at night under
every tree in an orchard would fail to draw
a single codling moth from its work of
egg laying in the trees, although its cousins
of all varieties would be Fastening from
all directions to meet destruction in the
fascinating flame.
The average lay person knows nothing
about the codling moth in its relation to the
worm he finds so frequently in the apple he
bites into, and, as matter of fact, Ii is
only within recent years that professional
entomologists even have acquainted them
selves with the entire life history of the
insect
The cooling moth energies from its CO.
coon about ten days after the apple bios
spring and the young fruit is grown to
perhaps an inch in diameter. The cocoons
lie beneath the scaly bark of the apple tree
trunks.
The moth is about half an inch long and
has four wings. It comes from the cocoon
at night and at once begins depositing its
eggs. A codling moths egg is nearly fiat
and not larger than a small pinhead. SO
small is it that, although the moth has
been known to naturalists for nearly three
centuries, ii was only four or five years
ago its egg was discovered positively and
described.
The egg is deposited and glued to the
surface of the apple, only single egg on
another one has already fastened an egg on
an apple it will not leave an egg of its own
there. but will seek unpre-empted fruit.
Each moth lays from eighty TO one hum
dred eggs. The egg matches a tiny worm
at the end of perhaps ten days, always at
night.
The worm at once crawls to the blossom
enc Oh the apple, enters the cavity llSlS
and tunnels down to the core, where 1t
feasts and grows and fattens on the heart
of the fruit, and at the end of month
tunnels its way back to the surface, emerg-
ing a plump, pinkish caterpillar three
quarters of an inch long. always coming
out at night. In truth, this creature, at all
stages of its existence, seems to love dark
ness better than light.
1t makes it's way without delay to the
trunk of the tree. where 1t wraps itself
about with its cocoon beneath a sheltering
10 nf arlx al oofn th0ra IN HING
until il in turn develops into a moth the
next season, or, if the fruit in which ii had
its home be an early variety, the same sea-
son, in which case the caterpillar under
goes double metaporphosis.
Tiny the codling moths egg is, there
is fly so small that 1t can deposit as many
as four of its own eggs in a single egg of
the moth. This flys eggs hatch worms that
devour the embryo of the moth in the egg,
and thus hosts of the moths ravenous prog
eny are destroyed before they have begun
active life.
Other parasitic enemies of the caterpillar
make away with untold numbers of the in
sects. and vast numbers of the cocoons
are uncovered and their contents deVOured
by woodpeckers and other insectvorous
birds, but enough come to maturity to as
sess a bounty of $25.o0O,0OO a year on the
| farmers of the country to keep them in
board and lodging.
Nothing but spraying the trees with a
solution of Paris green during the period
when the worms are on their way from the
egg to tunnel into the apple at the bios
som end checks the ravages of the pest,
and this the farmers a rule resolutely
persist in not doing.
The codling moth was first known such
in this country in Massachusetts, in 1919. al
! though it's worm had been working disas-
trously on the New England orchards for
seventy-fve years. the work being charged
| to the grub of the curculio. beetle. The
moth is supposed TO have been brought to
! Boston from southern Europe in an impor-
tation of apples about the middle of the last
! century.
In 1919 Joseph Tufts. of Cambridge, de-
| cided to breed some of the supposed cur
| culio grubs and the result was a beautiful
| four-winged moth, which he identified as
the codling moth. The pest gradually
! spread through the country with emigra-
/ ton from the East, until to-day there is
not an orchard on the continent which il
does not rob of nearly half of it's annual
| yield.