6 APPLE-ROOT BLIGHT ITS EXTENT. 



insect is not limited to the Pomcoz family, but infests the roots of 

 other deciduous forest and fruit trees. 



This affection of the roots of Apple trees has occasionally been 

 noticed in our agricultural periodicals, and various inquiries 

 have been made respecting the insect which occasions them, 

 which inquiries have received no satisfactory answers, for the 

 reason that the insect is a new species, different from any hitherto 

 described in books or known to our nurserymen and fruit growers. 

 A communication from J. Fulton, jr., of Chester county, Pa., in 

 Downing's Horticulturist, vol. iii, p. 391, gives additional evi- 

 dence of this being a common disease over a large extent of our 

 country, and causing great losses to our nurserymen. He says : 

 " The main purpose of my writing is to call attention to an im- 

 portant matter, and to ask for light upon the subject. In taking 

 up trees this fall (1848), I notice that some of the roots will .be 

 full of excrescences, or warts, and covered with a minute white, 

 woolly insect; and that some of them find lodgment on the 

 trunks of the trees, in the partly closed wounds made by prun- 

 ing. As the tree seemed vigorous, I paid little attention to the 

 subject, until another nurseryman called my attention to the 

 subject, and stated, that not being able to supply the demand 

 for Apple trees, he had been at several nurseries in this State to 

 purchase, and was hard set to get a supply, because so many 

 proved diseased in this way, and that thousands had to be thrown 

 away. Since this, a young friend of mine has returned from 

 Virginia, where he had sold and delivered several thousand trees ; 

 and he informs me that his trees were very generally so, and 

 that he was not aware that the appearance was at all prejudicial 

 to the health or value of the trees, nor did the propagator of 

 them seem to be aware of their hurtful nature. Can this insect 

 be the ' woolly aphis V And if so, what can nurserymen do to 

 get rid of a pest which, unfortunately, is by no means rarely 

 seen 1 I have detected the presence of the insect much the most 

 frequently on trees which grow on a gravelly or slaty soil, and 

 seldom on trees growing in a mellow loam." 



A short description of this species was published in my cata- 

 logue of the Homopterous Insects, in the State Cabinet of Natural 



