Summer Meeting. 57 



As regards Borers of various kinds — and we have three very common 

 ones, the peach-tree borer, the round-headed and the flat-headed apple-tree 

 borer — let me say that there is no single, good and reliable method by 

 which you can fight these insects successfully. You should scrape the 

 loose bark from the trunk and base of the tree and cover the same com- 

 pletely with a whitewash, which may be made as follows : 



Dissolve all the washing soda (salsoda) that you can in 6 gallons 

 of water ; add 2 gallons of soft soap and dissolve thoroughly ; then slake 

 a quantity of fresh stone lime to a thick paste and add as much of this 

 to the above mixture as is required to make a thick whitewash, which 

 will remain on the trees about an eighth of an inch or so in thickness. 

 This wash can be put upon the trees along the fore part of May and 

 again the middle of June, and under ordinary conditions will remain there 

 and prevent the depositing of eggs by the three borers mentioned. Then 

 each year, along the latter part of August, one should go through the 

 orchard, and by means of a sharp knife, dig out all the borers that have 

 gotten in. Wooden veneer wrappers can be successfully used about 

 young trees to protect them, provided they are pushed into the ground and 

 the top closed with cotton, and also provided these wrappers are removed 

 or pushed up the tree two or three times during the summer and the 

 trunks whitewashed, or in case woolly asphis is there, wash also with 

 kerosene emulsion. The only drawback to the use of these wrappers 

 is, that they allow other insects to accumulate under them and frequently 

 kill the trees. 



The Fruit-Trce Bark-Beetle (sometimes called the pinhole or 

 shot-hole beetle) has been doing a great amount of damage in 

 our Missouri orchards the past year or two. These insects prefer sickly, 

 dead, or injured trees or portions of trees. During the year of the 

 drought, the orchards were so weakened as to allow these insects to multi- 

 ply under the most favorable conditions, and they did so to such an extent 

 that many orchards or portions of orchards have died as a direct result 

 of the attack of these beetles, and only indirectly to the effects of the 

 drought which produced proper conditions for their development. So far 

 as my observation goes, about nine-tenths of the trees reported to be 

 killed by the drought were really directly killed by these beetles. 



This insect is a very small, dark beetle, one-eighth of an inch in 

 length. The female eats little holes through the bark and mines in the 

 cambium layer, making a tunnel about one inch in length, depositing eggs 

 to the right and left to the number of about fifLy in each tunnel 

 When these eggs hatch the larvae make little mines in the cambium layer, 

 and when they become full g^rown, transform to the pupa state inside 



