50 MISSOURI STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



orchards thus treated. Experts say that the foliage of the trees can be 

 thoroughly sprayed without dripping-, but I have never seen it done 

 with such care. The same applications and methods are also used 

 against the plum or peach curculio, and while some claim great success, 

 others assert that they cannot depeud upon them as remedies, and that 

 they almost invariably injure the foliage. I hope we shall obtain suffi- 

 cient data during the present season to enable us to decide upon the 

 desirability of the use of these substances. 



The ideal insecticide has yet, I fear, to be discovered. It must be 

 of a nature to kill by contact as well as by absorption, and yet not so 

 acrid as to injure plant tissue. On certain insects, such as the slug 

 caterpillars, white hellebore acts in this way; so does pyrethrum powder 

 on the larvre of the cabbage butterflies and on many other smooth 

 worms. The kerosene emulsions also have a two-fold effect, but we 

 have not, and it is doubtful if we ever will discover any substance that 

 will be death to all kinds of insects and at the same time innocuous to 

 foliage. I am now experimenting with some new remedies for which 

 great things are claimed, but cannot pronounce on their merits until I 

 have tested them more thoroughly. 



It sometimes happens that an insect that is widely disseminated 

 and not considered especially injurious will, within a limited area, ap- 

 pear in such numbers as to constitute itself a first-class pest. An in- 

 stance of this kind was brought to the notice of this society last summer 

 in Oregon. Mr. G. P. Luckhardt brought in a bundle of apple twigs 

 and branches which, as he asserted, correctly represented the condi- 

 tion of his entire orchard. On these twigs and branches the bark was 

 punctured, slit and roughened to an almost inconceivable extent, the 

 foliage was scanty, pale and dwarfed, and the orchard seemed in a 

 dying condition. Nothing like it had been seen before by any of us, 

 and none of us could at first pronounce with certainty upon the depre- 

 dator. It is true I did not fail to observe on some of the twigs sub- 

 mitted an unusual number of the small, green, spiny-backed young of 

 the buffalo tree-hopper (Ceresa bubalusj, and I also noted that some of 

 the punctures were clearly those of that insect, but the older work I 

 did not recognize, and it seemed quite incredible that so insignificant 

 an insect, and one that rarely appeared in noticeable numbers, could 

 have been the author of such extensive mischief. Yet so it proved, for 

 upon submitting the injured twigs to Prof. Riley, he assured me that, 

 notwithstanding all my doubts, the damage was done entirely by this 

 same tree-hopper, and explained that the growth and spreading of the 

 bark on the older wood had so extended and modified the slits and 

 punctures as to destroy their usual form. This tree-hopper belongs to 



