APPLE-TRUNK BARK-LOUSE — REMEDIES. 37 



to believe they were anything else than white dots natural to the 

 smooth young bark, until by careful watching some of them could 

 be perceived to be moving about upon the bark. 



When first hatched from the egg the larva is but about half the 

 size of the egg, of an oval form and a pale dull yellow color. 

 Three pairs of legs are perceptible, two placed anteriorly, the 

 other posteriorly and distant. It walks about with much life and 

 agility. I have not traced this insect through the subsequent 

 stages of its life with sufficient accuracy of observation to give 

 its history. 



A number of remedies for the bark-louse will be found report- 

 ed in late volumes of the Prairie Farmer and other western agri- 

 cultural papers. The secret remedy which was hawked through 

 that section, as perfectly sure of destroying these lice, was simply 

 an infusion of quassia, with which the trees were to be wet from 

 a syringe or watering pot. This of coarse was soon discovered 

 to be worthless, or effectual only when applied to the young new- 

 ly hatched lice, at which time infusion of tobacco or soap suds 

 would be a more economical and still more effectual remedy. 

 These, and also strong lye, potash water, whitewash, dry ashes, 

 sulphur, and I know not how many more articles have been re- 

 commended by different writers. In a late number of the Michi- 

 gan Farmer (vol. 13. p. 82), A. G. Hanford gives a very favorable 

 account of the effects of tar and linseed oil, beat together and ap- 

 plied warm with a paint brush thoroughly, before the buds begin 

 to expand in the spring. This, when dry, cracks and peels off, 

 bringing off the dead scales with it. Trees which were thus 

 treated grew from two to two and a half feet last summer, which 

 had advanced only a few inches in previous years. The remedy 

 to which Esq. Kimball, of Kenosha, resorts, is probably one of the 

 most efficacious, and as convenient as any; he boils leaf tobacco 

 in strong lye till it is reduced to an impalpable pulp, which it 

 will be in a short time, and mixes with it soft soap, (which has 

 been made cold; not the jelly-like boiled soap,) to make the mass 

 about the consistence of thin paint, the object being to obtain a" 

 preparation that will not be entirely washed from the tree by the 

 first rains which occur, as lye, tobacco water, and most other 



