s a delicate and interesting history. From
egg to imago the transformations proceed with regularity, and they are
marvelous. Had we not traced the sequence, no man could tell by
appearances that the larva, the pupa and the moth are one and the same
animal. They seem to have nothing in common. So is the egg stage as
different as the other three, but we are measurably prepared for this
epoch, since we know seeds so well; the egg and the seed are
analogous. That a moth in the air should come from a crawling worm in
an apple is indeed one of the miracles of nature. The worm leaves the
apple ere it falls; how the worm knows the time is again a mystery. By
some instinct, it is able to cognize a dying apple. The later worms,
either the lastlings from the early brood or the product of subsequent
broods, may remain in the apple when it is harvested, particularly in
an apple picked before it is quite mature and from which the worm has
not escaped.

The apple-worm ruins the crop by killing many of the fruits and by
blemishing the remainder. Seldom are there two worms in an apple. They
seem to respect each other's hunting-ground. From the worm's point of
view and from man's, one is enough.

If man has dominion and if he needs apples, then is he within his
rights if he joins issue with the insects. Yet is the insect as
interesting for all that. I think we should miss many of the
satisfactions of life, and certainly some of the disciplines, if there
were no insects. My apple-tree is a great place for a naturalist. Van
Bruyssel wrote a book on "The Population of an Old Pear-Tree." "When
certain blue spirits begin to flit about me," he writes, "I depart
from my study to go and read, in what I am allowed, even by my
clerical uncle, to call my book of devotions. The devotions I mean are
not in my book-case. No publisher, if he ever thought of such a thing,
could bring them out. They are a page of the book of Nature, opened in
the country, under blue sky, displayed at all season." What a
marvelous company Van Bruyssel found on his old pear tree; and what
inexhaustible worlds did Fabre discover in the lives of the spider,
the fly, the caterpillar, the wasps, the mason-bees and others!

Therefore we need not pause with the other four hundred and more
insect citizens of the apple-tree. Some of them, as the San Jose
scale, are not peculiarly apple-tree insects. My tree has another crew
of inhabitants, and to this company we may now have in