APPLE PEST.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 937, 14 February 1890, Page 2 (Supplement)

APPLE PEST.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE NEW ZEALAND MAIL. Sir, —We saw in an issue of your paper of the 24th January an account of a new “apple pest ” in New South Wales which destroys the flesh of the apple instead of the core like the codlin moth. Now, sir, we have just come from Nelson, and the first thing we noticed in the orchards there was the quantity of unripe apples lying under the trees, most of them not a quarter grown. We examined a good many, and in every instance we found that a small grub had eaten its way in from the side, and not from she eye, so perforating the fruit as to render it quite ur fit for any use. The apples on the trees were in the same condition, hardly asiugle one being sound. In Nelson it is called the codlin moth. But after reading your description of the “ apple maggot” our opinion is that it is the same. It is a very serious thing over there ; many people who were making a good living out of their apple trees are now digging them up. The matter is a very important one, which ought not to be allowed to rest without some action being taken. In its extermination we have tried, and others have tried, many things to destroy it withont success, and we now believe that the most effectual way would be to pass a law to compel all owners of apple, pear, and quince trees in infected districts to so cut back their trees as to prevent them bearing, which, so far from injuring them, would inmost cases prove beneficial by forming a younor head again. If this was done for three years, the grub or maggot being unable to live on other fruit, must be starved out. In the meantime something ought to. be done to protect non-infected districts—all fruit shipped to Wellington, for instance, undergoing a strict inspection, and the slightest sign of infected fruit at once returned, or forbidding it entering at all.—We are, &c., Henry Newport, Charles Whiting, Nurserymen,. Palmerston North. [We shall be glad to hear from our correspondents again.—Ed. N.Z.T.]