. Insects injurious to fruits. Illustrated with four hundred and forty wood-cuts. Insect pests. ATTACKING THE BRANCHES. I43 its transformations, and finally escapes as a perfect beetle. This insect is about eleven-twentieths of an inch in length, with a robust body of a brownish-gray color with dull red- dish-yellow dots, and having a broad gray band across the middle of the wing-cases. The antennae are longer than the body. The beetle is more common on the hickory than on the pear. To subdue the insect, the dead and fallen twigs should be gathered and burnt. No. 68.—The Pear-blight Beetle. Xy
. Insects injurious to fruits. Illustrated with four hundred and forty wood-cuts. Insect pests. ATTACKING THE BRANCHES. I43 its transformations, and finally escapes as a perfect beetle. This insect is about eleven-twentieths of an inch in length, with a robust body of a brownish-gray color with dull red- dish-yellow dots, and having a broad gray band across the middle of the wing-cases. The antennae are longer than the body. The beetle is more common on the hickory than on the pear. To subdue the insect, the dead and fallen twigs should be gathered and burnt. No. 68.—The Pear-blight Beetle. Xylehorus pyri (Peck). During the heat of midsummer, twigs of the pear-tree some- times become suddenly blighted, the leaves and fruit wither, and a discoloration of the bark takes place, followed by the speedy death of the part affected. Most frequently these effects are the result of fire-blight, a mysterious disease, probably of a fungoid character, but occasionally they are due to the agency of the pear-blight beetle. In these latter instances there will be found, on examination, small perforations like pin-holes at the base of some of the buds, and from these issue small cylin- drical beetles, shown magnified in Fig. 150, about one-tenth of an inch long, of a deep brown or black color, with antennae and legs of a rusty red. The thorax is short, very convex, rounded and roughened; the wing-covers are thickly but minutely punctated, the dots being arranged in rows; the hinder part of the body terminates in an abrupt and sudden slope. The beetle deposits its eggs at the base of the bud, and when hatched the young larva follows the course of the eye of the bud towards the pith, around which it passes, consuming the tissues in its course, thus interfering witii the circulation and causing the twig to wither. The larva changes to a pupa, and subsequently to a beetle, in the bottom of its burrow, and makes its escape from the tree in the latter part of June or the beginn
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1880, bookpublisherphila, bookyear1883
