New Elementary Agriculture for Rural and Graded Schools; An Elementary Text Book Dealing with the Plants, Insects, Birds, Weather, and Animals of the Farm by Charles Edwin Bessey (Paperback / softback, 2012)
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1903 Excerpt: ...or pole may be used to burn the caterpillars that are too far from the ground to be reached by hand. Cabbage Worms.--These are sometimes the young of butterflies, and at other times the young of moths. The common green ones are the caterpillars of the white butterflies that flit around our gardens. There are two or three broods of these worms every year, so that we seem to have them all summer. They are killed by some of the smaller ichneumon flies, one or two kinds of stink bugs, and a few of the digger wasps and ground beetles. Toads also sometimes eat them. The English sparrows likewise feed many of them, as well as other insects, to their young during the summer months. The Apple-Worm, or Codling Moth is responsible for most if t all of the wormy apples in this part of the country. So a few words about it may be useful here. In the spring of the year, just after the blossoms fall, a small gray moth, with a dull, brownish, coppercolored patch near the outer edge of each front wing, lays its eggs in the flower end of the apples. These soon hatch, and the little worms eat their way into the fruit. In about a month or six weeks they are full grown and leave the apples, going quietly to the ground, cracks in the bark, and other places to spin their cocoons and change to the resting-stage. Ten days or two weeks later they have changed to moths, which, in turn, lay their eggs on the half-grown apples. This time many of the eggs are placed between two apples that touch, or between an apple and a limb, as well as in the blossom end. Some of the worms from the eggs of this second brood become full grown and leave the apple early eugh to change to moths in time to produce a third brood of the worms before winter. Most of this second brood, however, ...