THE FRUIT FLY.

Evening Post, Volume LXXIII, Issue 69, 22 March 1907, Page 2

THE FRUIT FLY.

APPEARANCE IN THE BLENHEIM DISTRICT. Mr. J. C. Blackmbre, Government Pomologist, has been on an official visit to the Blenheim district to investigate a report that the fruit fly had appeared there. Mr. Blackmore informed an Express reporter that on Saturday he visited a. number of small orchards. The fly was found in one or two orchards near Springlands, but the attack had fortunately developed at the fag end of the season when most of the fruit had been gathered. He saw on his rounds, however, some magnificent crops of peaches. The Queensland fruit fly, Mr. Blackmore explained, had appeared in the districts of Queensland, New South Wales, and Victoria, and many of the South Sea Islands. In order to mini, tnise the danger of the pest being introduced into the colony the fiuit inspec tors had been instructed by the Government Biologist to totally destroy every consignment in which the least trace of the fly was discovered. Unfortunately, this order was over-ridden by the Acting-Minister some time ago, ana the inspectors at Auckland were given au- \ thority, over the head of the Biologist, '■ to pick ever infected fruit. It was beyond doubt, said Mr. Blackmore, that the operation of this interference with the Biologist's instructions resulted in the spreading of the fly to several districts. Mr. Blackmore happened to' be in Christchurch when a portion of a picked-over consignment arrived there. He inspected it, found it badly affected, and ordered the whole lot to be destroyed. The fiuit fly, ho further stated, is ten times more serious than the codlin moth. It attacked every kind of fruit, and while showing a slight predilection for plunis and peacbe3, it did not stop until it had "blown" and rotted every product of tho orchard, even spoiling tomato crops. In Bfenheim, numerous small household orchards wero contiguous over a fairly large district, and the fly thus jjot a better chance of spreading than it did, for instance, in Hawkes Bay, where tho outbreaks were confined to isolated orchards. * The infection, according to Mr. Blackmore, is very difficult to detect while the fruit hangs to the tree. The only indication of a peach or apple being blown is a small hole not larger than a pin prick. The breaking of a fruit thus perforated would probably reveal from naif a doz«n to a hundred worms. Thus the thoughtless throwing away of a rotten apple might lead to tho infection of the orchards of a whole district.