C0M3I0N APPLE-TREE. 317 



appears in large bunches ; branch after branch becomes infected; the tree grows 

 cankery, pines, and dies. How this is effected, no one knows, though the cause 

 and effect are too evident to escape the notice of the commonest clown. In large 

 orchards, it is vain to hope for a cure; but not so in gardens. Directly you see 

 the least morsel of cotton, make up your mind to a little trouble, and you will 

 get rid of it. In the first place, get a plasterer's white-washing brush; then get 

 a large pot of double size ; make your man heat it, till it is quite liquid ; then go 

 with him into the garden, and see that he paints over every patch of white, 

 though not bigger than a sixpence ; the next morning have the size-pot heated 

 again, and have another hunt; and keep on doing so every morning for a fort- 

 night. Your man will tell you it's no use tell him that's your business, not 

 his. Your neighbours will laugh at you for your pains do it before they are up. 

 I have tried it, and know it to be effectual. Spirit of tar has been used with par- 

 tial effect; so also has resin. White-washing has been often tried, and, as it 

 contains some size, is not entirely useless; and some horticulturists think it 

 ornamental I do not."* 



The apple-tree, as well as the quince, mountain ash, June berry, and various 

 species of thorns and aronias are attacked by the larvse of the two-striped saperda, 

 {Saperda blvittata, Say,) denoted by the adjoining figure. The 

 upper side of the body of the perfect insect is marked with two 

 longitudinal white stripes between three others of a light-brown 

 colour, while the face, the antennse, the under side of the body, 

 and the legs, are white. This beetle varies in length from a lit- 

 tle more than one half to three fourths of an inch. It comes forth 

 from the trunks of the trees early in June, making its escape in the 

 night, during which time only it uses its ample wings in passing 

 from one tree to another in search of companions and for food. 

 In the day-time, it keeps at rest among the leaves of the plants 

 on which it feeds. In the months of June and July, the females 

 deposite their eggs upon the bark of the trees, uear the roots, and the larvae or 

 borers hatched from them consist of fleshy whitish grubs, without legs, nearly 

 cylindrical in their form, and tapering a httle from the first ring to the end of 

 the body. The head is small, horny, and of a brownish colour. The first ring 

 is much larger than the others, the next two very short, and, like the first, are 

 covered with punctures and very minute hairs. This grub, with its strong jaws, 

 cuts a cylindrical passage through the bark, and pushes its castings backwards 

 out of the hole, while it bores upwards into the wood. It continues in the larva 

 state two or three years, during which it penetrates eight or ten inches into the 

 trunk of the tree, its burrow at the end approaching to, and being covered only 

 by, the bark. It is in this situation that its transformation takes place, which is 

 completed about the first of June, when the beetle gnaws through the bark that 

 covers the end of the burrow, and comes out of its place of confinement in the night. 

 One of the oldest, safest, and most successful modes of destroying this borer is, to 

 thrust a wire into the hole it has made ; or, what would probably answer as 

 well, to plug it up with soft wood.f 



Young apple-trees, and the extremities of the limbs of older trees, are very 

 much subject to the attacks of a small species of bark-louse, {Coccus * * * ^ * f) 

 The limbs and smooth parts of the trunks are sometimes completely covered with 

 these insects. They measure about one tenth of an inch in length, are of an 

 oblong-oyal shape, gradually decreasing to a point at one end, and are of a brown- 

 ish colour, very near to that of the bark of the tree. There is also another spe- 

 cies of coccus, which inhabits the apple-tree, didering from the one above men- 



* See London Gardener's Magazine, ix.. p. 33d. t See Harris' Report, p. 89. 



