218 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



given in the books are, to take a wire and run it up the 

 hole, and you will reach him. That is very well, only the 

 wire is not the best thing. I hold in my hand the best im- 

 plement I know of: it is a small, round piece of whalebone 

 eight or ten inches long, and so supple that it will follow the 

 windings of a crooked hole as a wire will not. You take 

 that in your hand, and go round your orchard and introduce 

 it into the lower end of the hole ; run it up, and, when it 

 reaches the worm, you will hear, as you withdraw it, a suck- 

 ing sound that is exceedingly agreeable to you, but I have no 

 doubt it is unpleasant to the borer. That is always effectual. 

 But a man who is careful will never allow the borer to o-et to 

 that stage ; because, if he goes round every year, they will 

 never get large. If he neglects them, or if he undertakes 

 to go through his orchard for the first time next spring, he 

 will find a good many of that kind. 



Then there is the rose-bug. Almost everybody knows 

 it by that name, though it is called by another name in 

 some parts of the State. Grape-growers have had occasion 

 to know it the last year pretty thoroughly. It is an insect 

 that first appears in the latter part of June. It goes through 

 its changes in the ground. The larva does its feeding there, 

 and it comes out in June a perfect insect which feeds upon 

 a great variety of plants. It eats foliage of many kinds, but 

 its especial delight is in the unopened buds of grapes. One 

 good-sized cluster will just about make a breakfast for a pair 

 of them, and that is rather expensive keeping. This last 

 season they were very numerous in many places. In the 

 eastern part of the State, I understand they were not seen. 

 They may come there next year, and perhaps the year after 

 they will be plenty in some other locality. Some years they 

 have been exceedingly troublesome, and in some I have seen 

 scarcely any. If you have a vineyard, or a single grape-vine, 

 more or less, you will be pretty sure to find rose-bugs upon 

 them if they are to be found an3^where. There are a few 

 plants that they give the preference to over the grape-vine. 

 The best trap I ever saw for them, in the way of a plant, was 

 the blossom of the rhubarb. If any of you market-gardeners 

 have grapes and rhubarb growing together, you will be very 

 likely to find large numbers of them upon the stalk of rhu- 

 barb-blossoms. It is something to their taste, like the grape- 



