12 APPLE-TRUNK BORER — ITS EXTENT. 



opinion that particular localities are unfavorable to the growth 

 of fruit trees, and this opinion has almost invariably arisen from 

 the fact that orchards planted in these situations have not been 

 thrifty and productive. Now there is a strong probability that, at 

 least in many cases, those failures have been caused by the attacks 

 of insects, and that these localities which are in such bad repute 

 are in reality as well adapted for fruit culture as any others in 

 their vicinity. The justness of these remarks will be evident from 

 the following case : A lot at East Greenwich, Washington co., 

 recently purchased by Dr Henry K. McLean, had ten young 

 apple trees standing upon it, which are about ten feet high. The 

 bad condition of these trees was noticed by the doctor, when bar- 

 gaining for the land, and he was told by the former owner that he 

 must not expect fruit trees to do well there, the soil and situation 

 (a terraced flat of gravel, bordering upon Batten kill,) being 

 unadapted to them. Other residents in the neighborhood reite- 

 rated the same statement. The doctor, on inspecting the trees 

 more closely, soon afterwards, discovered that they were badly 

 infested with the borer, and going to work with his knife, he last 

 spring dug out and destroyed from these ten trees, over sixty 

 worms, as he assures me, although the statement is almost incredi- 

 ble. Several of the trees were almost girdled, and would have 

 been quite so in a short time. These trees now show for them- 

 selves that during the past summer they have scarcely been 

 equalled in the rapidity of their growth and their thrifty condi- 

 tion, by any others in the country. And it is thus rendered evi- 

 dent that the gardens and yards of that neighborhood are well 

 adapted for'the cultivation at least of the apple tree, and that the 

 bad repute in which they have heretofore been held, has been 

 wholly unmerited. 



Elmer Ealdwin, Esq., of Farm Ridge, La Salle county, Illi- 

 nois, an intelligent fruit culturist, who has had much experience 

 with some of the insects infesting our fruit trees, and to whom I 

 am indebted for several interesting facts relating to thi« and 

 other species, informs me, that he sat out fifty apple trees in the 

 year 1838, and in 1813 when they had grown to about three 

 inches in diameter, a neighbor enquired if the borer was among 



