“Easily. The point pierced by the ichneumon’s terebra is surrounded by a little black spot. When you are gathering caterpillars it is well not to crush those that you see are pricked, nor yet those that look diseased and have a loose skin. They are ichneumon-feeders, and their preservation means so many more swarms of ichneumons the next summer for the destruction of caterpillars.” CHAPTER XLIX APPLE-EATERS “Please tell us about the worm we find in apples and pears,” was Louis’s request one day when the children were gathered about their uncle. “That worm, my lad,” he began, “as I have already briefly explained, is the grub or larva of a small moth.” “Seems to me,” interrupted Jules, “the moth is responsible for a good deal of mischief.” “Yes, moths do more harm than any other insects; but not as moths, for these never give us any cause for complaint, being content to suck a little honey through their slender trumpet from the flowers growing on every side. It is in the larva state, with appetites of the most varied sort, that they commit their ravages. I have already told you about worms that gnaw wood and those that eat woolen stuffs, those that browse the foliage and those that attack roots. Now we come to some that give their attention to fruit. “The best-known of these is the worm that lives in apples and pears. We usually call it the apple-worm, and its moth is known as the apple-pyralis. The term pyralis is new to you; it comes from a Greek word meaning fire, and was long ago ignorantly applied to the apple-moth because that insect was supposed to eat fire as its regular diet. Its forward wings are ash-gray streaked crosswise with brown and ornamented at the tip with a large red spot encircled by a golden-red border. The rear wings are brown. When the fruit is just beginning to form, the pyralis lays an egg in the blossom end of apple or pear, no matter which, and the little worm that soon comes from this egg takes up its abode close to the seeds. The narrow channel by which it entered skins over so that the wormy fruit appears intact for some time. Meanwhile the worm is living in the lap of luxury, with an abundance of its favorite food all around; but it must have a passage communicating with the outside so as to get air and make the abode sanitary, encumbered as it is with refuse and excrement. Accordingly the worm bores a little tunnel through the flesh of the fruit to the skin and through this also; there the tunnel ends in a round hole. Through this passageway the larva receives fresh air and throws out from time to time the chewed and digested pulp, in the form familiar to us as reddish wormhole dust. The translucent quality of its skin causes the worm to vary in hue according to the color of what it eats, being sometimes white, sometimes brown or yellow, and sometimes pink. It is ornamented with little black tubercles or pimples arranged in pairs. The head and the first ring-like section of the body are brown.