HOW TO FIGHT THE INSECT. 



Including a Discussion of Previous Recommendations and a Detailed 

 Account of Our Extensive Experiments Against It. 



For nearly a century and a half American peach-growers have 

 been lighting tlie peach-tree borer, and the proverbial Yankee 

 ingenuity has been freely exercised to devise methods to circumvent 

 the pest. The result has been that more than a hundred different 

 remedial measures have been recommended. We doubt if any 

 other American insect pest has had its life threatened with so many 

 different kinds of machinations. And yet peach-tree borei-s are now, 

 after being besieged for more than a century by such an army of 

 man's devices, apparently as numerous and destructive in most peach 

 orchards as in tlie days of our forefathers. 



We shall not attempt to discuss all of the methods which have 

 been recommended, for, altliough we have made a critical and 

 extended search tlirough our American insect literature, doubtless 

 some suggestions have escaped our notice ; and again such a dis- 

 cussion would require too much space, and much of it would be of 

 no practical value to peach-growers. Many methods will only be 

 mentioned in connection with some similar methods used in our 

 extensive experiments. 



Borne early Tecoininendations and experiments. — In 1771 a paper 

 was submitted to the American Philosophical Society " On the 

 l^ature of the Worms so Prejudicial to the Peach Trees for Some 

 Years Past and a Method for Preventing the Damage in Future " 

 (see the Bibliography, Cooper, 1771). We liave found no metliods 

 recommended for coml)ating this pest earUer than this, and not hav- 

 ing access to this article, we are not sure of the nature of the method 

 then proposed. But apparently the same author stated in 1806 that 

 he liad successfully used for many years a combination of the " dig- 

 ging out" and " mounding" methods, and that he had tested the 



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