PEACH. ROOT THE BORER. ITS EXTENT. 109 



Long Island and in the adjacent districts, so that this tree does 

 not now flourish as formerly. And similar to this is the concur- 

 rent testimony of nurserymen and writers in our agricultural 

 periodicals. Whilst upon new land at the west and southwest, 

 without any of the care and attention which we here bestow, this 

 tree grows with all its pristine vigor and luxuriance. 



Two maladies, more particularly seem to attack and destroy 

 this tree, preventing it from attaining that age and size which it 

 formerly acquired. These are, the " yellows," which seems to be 

 a kind of decline or consumption peculiar to this tree, and the 

 borer or grub at the root, the insect which we are now to consider. 

 This last it confessedly the worst enemy which the peach tree has 

 to encounter in our country. During the past year, 1854, I 

 noticed it everywhere, from the banks of the Hudson to those of 

 the Mississippi. At the west, however, it is much less common, 

 and by no means so destructive as with us. My own residence is 

 near the northernmost limit where the peach can be cultivated, 

 the severity of the winters commonly destroying the trees whilst 

 they are young and tender; and as I here had never captured the 

 moth which produces these borers, I have hitherto supposed 

 this was beyond the limit to which this insect reaches. But of a 

 dozen peach trees in my yard, now about ten years old, I the pre- 

 sent spring, find all except one are destroyed, the roots being sur- 

 rounded and enveloped in a mass of jelly-like gum from one to 

 three inches in thickness at the surface of the ground, and the 

 bark entirely eroded and worms of all sizes burrowing in it. 

 And throughout this district of country the peach trees are almost 

 all found to be dead the present spring. It is universally sup- 

 posed and confidently affirmed that it has been the winter which 

 has destroyed them. But in several instances where I have in- 

 formed persons of the condition of my own trees, they find, on 

 coming to examine theirs, that the roots are surrounded in the 

 same manner with a bed of exuded gum, in which a number of 

 worms are nestled. It is thus evident that it is the borer and not 

 the winter that has occasioned this wide-spread calamity, and 

 that the evil which we have suffered might have been averted by 



