154 APPENDIX. 
bushes and spread the infestation. Birds, wind, and infested prunings 
do the same thing! No wonder then that the pest spreads rapidly 
when once it gets a foothold in a break of Black Currants. 
‘‘The best protectives are clean ground ; clean and vigorous young 
bushes, wide apart; high cultivation ; and a watchful eye on the first sign 
of a Mite, and its IMMEDIATE DESTRUCTION !”’ 
From comparison of the various observations of careful work under 
the superintendence of well-known managers or owners of large breadths 
of Black Currant ground, it seems clearly shown that at present none 
of the preventive measures tried can be trusted to as permanently 
serviceable (and even the removal of the galled buds which must 
necessarily destroy a part of the infestation) by no means acts satis- 
factorily. 
But there is one point in method of growing which is alluded to 
above in the replies to my enquiries with which I was favoured by Mr. 
Malcolm Dunn, and which I believe would be of great practical 
importance both in lessening spread of infestation, and in laying open 
what is present, much more to observation, and consequent remedial 
measures (to be applied at once on observation) than is at present the 
case. 
This is, the growing of Currants in lines, or long plots, with other crops 
between, instead of, as is often the case at present, growing the bushes 
together year after year on the same ground, and even up to areas of 
several acres. In this present way, besides the spread of Mites from 
bush to bush in their migrations, which it is impossible to guard 
against, there is in all probability a great spread of Mites by carriage 
on the clothes of ‘‘ pickers,” or other workers who have to move amongst 
the bushes (and in the first case at least) cannot avoid their hands and 
sleeves coming much in contact with the stems during the removal of 
the fruit. As we all know there are some practical difficulties in the 
way of intermediate lines of crop by reason of the long distance to 
which the roots of the Black Currants spread from the bushes; still 
in the very great difficulties in which we stand at present, I believe 
that the intermediate cropping is well worth consideration, and that 
until the elaborate and careful experiments mentioned below, which 
are being instituted at the Experimental Fruit Farm at Woburn, afford 
us better preventive guidance than we have at present, that it is to 
separation of the great masses of infested bushes that we must look, to 
give us opportunity of in some degree preventing the spread of the 
infestation.* 
* The following note with which I was favoured on January 20th by Mr. Lewis 
Castle, Manager of the Woburn Experimental Fruit Farm, from Ridgmont, Aspley 
Guise, Bedfordshire, gives some very serviceable observation on the above point :— 
“Upon reflection, I think your suggestion with regard to planting Black 
