342 STATE BOAED OF AGRICULTURE. 



come out of liis mouth thiit is not strongly tinctured with senso, so my advice 

 shall contain the most sense in the fewest words tliat I am able to coinmaiid. 



The calcareous soils are strongest and best for fruit, tree fruit, but thorouglily 

 underdrain them ; feed them about a bushel of salt to the acre every year for 

 orcharding; the pear, quince, and ])lum especially; at the same time apply 

 three or four wagon loads of ashes yearly to the soil and give the soil a liberal 

 supply of manure ; plow and hoe them all in and your soil will richly reward 

 you for your liberality. 



It seems necessary to come down on the apple tree borer. There are two 

 kinds, and very destructive I have found them both. Oue lays its eggs singly 

 on the sunny side of the tree rather low down, hatches and enters the bark, 

 where as footless as a tadpole it feeds awhile; as it grows it works upward and 

 deeper until it penetrates the wood, leaving a round hole. This grub remains 

 as such for three years, when it comes out a brown beetle, lays its eggs, and 

 dies. 



Another kind is nearly similar to the saperda, but attacks the tree rather 

 higher up, in fact all along the sunny side, and the black beetle, about half aa 

 inch long, may be seen toward the last of May and through June and into 

 July, running up and down the body of your trees, finding places to deposit their 

 eggs, when they hatch and penetrate to the sap and work about under the bark, 

 sometimes completely girdling the trees, but commonly working on the south- 

 west side of the tree, leaving, where they penetrate the wood, an oblong or 

 nearly flat hole. Wherever you see on the body of your tree a spot of depressed 

 bark, be sure there is a borer there, and the war should begin at once. 



The cecropia only strips the foliage from the tree, finds a place to spin its 

 cocoon, and begin its transition to that of the largest species of moth. 



I caught one of these worms and took it to the house, placed it on a raised 

 window, when it made its way to the under side of the upper sash and com- 

 menced its cocoon, and it is there now. I had one hatch last year and year 

 before in the house. 



The next worms seem to be the tent caterpillar and fall web worm and the 

 canker worm, and you must hand-pick or burn them with a kerosene or ben- 

 zine lamp, hold upon a pole to reach them in their nests, where they are easily 

 destroyed, but it requires constant watching and warfare to rid your orchard of 

 these pests. 



The bark louse can be easily cleaned out by the soap wash. 



But the codling moth is the most fearful and hardest insect we have to deal 

 with among apples and pears, and therefore merits some notice, but not being 

 a scientific entomologist it will get sparingly noticed. It seems that it is rap- 

 idly increasing in this country, and very little perfect and sound fruit is found 

 in the markets. The egg is dropped in the blossom end of the fruit very soon 

 after it is set; the warm weather hatching the egg, the worm very soon finds 

 its way to and about the core and finally gnaws through the side of the fruit 

 and finds its way down the limbs to the coarse bark, and gets under the scales 

 of the bark to spin its cocoon, and comes out in the spring a moth ready to 

 drop her eggs again ; some find their way to the ground in the apple and crawl 

 out to find a resting place. 



All wormy fruit should be gathered as soon as it drops, and fed out or oth- 

 erwise destroyed, and traps placed in the trees to catch the worms, and lam^^s 

 or fires lighted in the orchard to catch the moths in the night time. 



Some years ago wo were very much troubled with the geonictrid or spau 

 worm:?, but they are more easily disposed of, and will not receive a biographical 



