110 STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



curculio by means of the arsenites. He replied that further tests had 

 tended to show that curculio can not be killed by spraying, at least not in 

 sufficient numbers to make it a safe reliance. Jarring is the better 

 method, because it is sure. A good substitute for a mallet, which is likely 

 to injure trees, even when shielded with rubber, is to take an old clothes- 

 wringer roller and put a handle part way through it. The rose chafer has 

 been hard to kill, but at last we have him. Lime water (take unslaked 

 lime enough to make the water milky white) sprayed on the trees or 

 bushes will keep him off. Addition of two quarts or little more of carbolic 

 acid to a barrel of the water would make it even better. 



Mr. Steaens: Great care must be taken in use of the acid. I use lime 

 dust with carbolic acid to keep off curculio, and prefer lime to water 

 because, in using the latter, the acid floats at first and settles to the bot- 

 tom of the barrel at last; and so, going to the foliage undiluted, burns it. 



Prof. Cook spoke of the mimicry by moths of wasps, which in great 

 degree preserves them from the depredations of birds. He also remarked 

 that the new currant borer, like the apple maggot, had previously worked 

 upon something else, which had been removed and the insects forced to 

 seek new food. The apple maggot is at first a pretty fly. In spring it 

 pierces the skin of the apple and lays an egg which hatches and the larva 

 bores all through the fruit. The maggot is found in fall apples chiefly, 

 because of its time of hatching. The grower should get all such apples 

 into beef and pork — apples are very valuable as food for stock. The 

 maggots do not come out to jjupate till the apple falls, so all are easily 

 captured. When you find a tree infected, feed all the fruit upon it. Car- 

 bolic acid mixtures about trees will keep off the peach borer. So, probably, 

 would tarred paper. The moths of the borers begin about July 1 and keep 

 on through August. The borers found in September are from eggs laid 

 in July. Those laid in August are not found till May. A good method 

 is to apply about the. trees ashes into which have been mixed carbolic 

 acid. 



The society finally adjourned, after receiving invitations to hold the 

 July meeting in Port Huron and the next annual meeting in Eaton Rapids. 



TWO LETTERS THAT WERE READ. 



Benton Harbor, Mich., Nov. 21, 1890. 

 Edwy C. Reid, Esq., Secretary State Horticultural Society, Allegan, Michigan. 



People interested in raising peaches fully appreciate the importance of the peach 

 yellows law and the necessity of rigidly enforcing the same. While there are many 

 persons and much money invested in the attempt to grow peaches, there are not a few 

 fruitgrowers also endeavoring to raise plums. The principal drawback met with by 

 the latter is the disease known as black-knot. It is universally conceded by our best 

 informed horticulturists that, to combat this disease with any hope of success, it is 

 absolutely necessary that every branch be destroyed as soon as it is discovered to be 

 attacked by black-knot. Merely cutting off the the affected part and throwing it on the 

 ground will not answer the purpose. And we are informed that a tree affected with 

 this disease is almost sure to affect others around it for a distance of half a mile or a 

 mile. People living in sections of our state where the plum is raised, know that the 

 commonest sights are plum trees literally covered with black-knot. 



A man, trying to raise a few plums for his own use or for market, does not like to go 

 around among his neighbors, criticising their infirmities or instructing them how to 



