lo Oct. 1910.] Educational Facilities at the Yiiiciiltural CoUcgc. 643 



blister mite. Gall mites blister the leaves of some plants in places, and it 

 looks as if it had been burnt or toasted. I'his is why the name Phytoptus 

 was given to the tiny mite causing this. White hairs in a mass, like felt, 

 grow on the underside of the blister. The colour changes to white, yellow 

 and brown. People thought the felt hairs were caused by a fungus, but 

 after a while they found they were inhabited by very small animals 

 I -2 50th of an inch in length and i -Sooth of an inch in width. Ihat is, it 

 would take 250 of them put end to end to make an inch. These peculiar 

 animals have lost their third and fourth pairs of legs. They have two 

 piercing organs with which they pierce the leaf and suck out the juice. 



It is not very serious unless the flower is attacked. Some vines are 

 more subject than others. The best thing to do is to spray the vines 

 attacked with sulphur. 



PHYLLOXERA. 



/. Wade, age IJ. 



The word Phylloxera is composed of two Greek words — PJiyllon, 

 meaning a leaf ; and xeros, meaning dry or withered, from the appearance 

 ol the plant attacked. The life history of Phylloxera is very interesting. 

 The first stage is the winter egg. This is laid on the spurs or the older 

 wood. Nearly all creatures do what their ancestors have done, and the 

 phylloxera is no exception to this rule. Some lay on the young and some 

 on the old wood. Those which are laid on the young wood get cut off 

 when pruning. In pruning we cut off nearly all the year's growth. The 

 reason why these eggs are called winter eggs is because they can stand very 

 cold weather. A peculiar thing about the eggs is that they will not hatch 

 out till the warm weather comes. If this insect comes out on an American 

 vine, it goes to the leaves as soon as it is hatched, and forms a gall on 

 them. But if it hatches out on a European vine it goes straight to the 

 roots, and sets up its work of destruction. 



The phylloxera is a kind of aphis. It has a beak, and drives this beak 

 into the root, sucking up the food that should go to the plant, and, worse 

 than this, it causes mortification of the tissue. It cannot do much harm 

 to the American vine roots, because they are protected with a corky kind 

 of covering, but if the phylloxera gets through this, the vine can just throw 

 off the injury, and it does the vine no harm. After they have been in the 

 root form for a time, nature seems to tell them that food is getting scarce, 

 or that the vine is beginning to die. Then they turn into nymphs. They 

 go through a few moults, and then come to the surface as winged insects. 



The winged insect has large wings for the size of its body. They can- 

 not fly very well, but they spread their wings, and the wind catches them, 

 and they go a fair distance. If she drops down in a gum tree paddock 

 she dies very quickly, as. luckilv for us. phylloxera cannot live on anything 

 but vines, though in some parts of the world they ha\-e one that li\'es on 

 oak trees. 



But we will suppose she drops into a vineyard safely. She goes to a 

 vine, where her instinct leads her. She lays two different sized eggs ; a 

 larger one from which the female hatches, and a smaller one out of which 

 the male comes. Soon after they hatch they mate, and the male dies imme- 

 diately. The female only lives long enough to lay the winter eggs. This 

 completes the cycle, and brings us to our starting point. The life history 

 of the phylloxera was very hard to find out, because not only are they so 

 small, but thev spend nearly all their life under the soil. 



