428 FORTY-EIGHTH REPORT ON THE STATE MUSEUM 



the Slate of New York. It was, therefore, desirable that fruit-growers 

 should spray their trees at once with kerosene emulsion, strong soap 

 suds, or tobacco water, and not wait until the aphides have greatly- 

 multiplied and found shelter within the curled leaves where the insecti- 

 cide could not reach them. A long, cold rain following in a week or 

 ten days the appearance of the insect, woul i probably be quite as bene- 

 ficial as the spraying recommended, if we could judge from observa- 

 tions in preceding years, but, of course, this providential aid could not 

 be counted upon. 



"Since then we have had throughout the State heavy rains, continu- 

 ing with more or less intermission, amounting to from two to three 

 inches of fall. It was not a cold rain, however, and judging from a 

 few reports since received (I have not been able to make personal ob- 

 servations), it failed to prove very efficient in the desired direction, for 

 the apple aphis is said to be about as abundant as before. 



"Our hop-growers also are feeling considerable anxiety, for the same 

 conditions that favor an unusual number of the apple aj^his would nat- 

 urally tend to the multiplication of the hop-vine aphis, as was so mark- 

 edly illustrated in 1886. 



" The hop-growers have, therefore, been advised to keep close watch 

 for the first appearance of the hop aphis on the upper leaves of the 

 outer rows of their hop yards. They will probably be seen there about 

 the last of May or the first of June as full-grown, winged females, 

 which have just flown from neighboring plum-trees, where the winter 

 had beeo passed in the egg and the early spring as wingless females. 

 If these, the mothers and proirenitors of a number of successive broods 

 through the summer, are killed at this time bj' proper spraying with 

 suitable insecticides — in the proportion that they are destroyed, will 

 subsequent injury to the crop be prevented. 



" It is said that in England the hop growei's do not attempt to grow 

 a hop crop without their regular ' hop washings,' which we call 

 spraying." 



[Mr. C. C. Risley, under date of June 5th, reported that the aphis 

 was at that time to be f jund in several of the yards in the vicinity of 

 Waterville, not only on the outer rows, but also in the central part of 

 the fields — an unusual occurrence for so early in the season. Soon 

 after (June Tth), Mr. Risley sent, as illustrating the abundance of the 

 aphis, a small hop-vine leaf of not more than one-fourth of an inch in 

 area, having upon it twenty-five of the winged migrants from plum 

 trees. Still later, Mr. Turnboul, of Glen, estimated that, assuming an 

 average in former years of twenty-five of the winged migrants on a 



