CURRANT MITE. 155 
By kind permission of Mr. Spencer Pickering, F.R.8., Director of 
the Woburn Experimental Fruit Farm, I am permitted to insert the 
following account of the experiments now in progress, and also the 
proposed course of treatment arranged after much consideration of the 
requirements of the case. 
The following note, with which I was favoured by My. Pickering 
on January 29th of the present year, gives a short general preliminary 
statement of work in progress or under contemplation :— 
«The scheme of investigation which I have adopted with the 
Black Currants is as follows :— 
«‘Two separate plantations are each apportioned to experiments 
with paraffin, calcium sulphide, antinonnin, and carbolic acid. In 
each case there are plots in which the insecticide is used in four or 
five different strengths. The dressings will be applied once a month. 
After the buds begin to expand, the plots will be subdivided, and in 
one section of them the dressing used previously will be continued, 
and in the others weaker dressings of various strengths will be applied. 
There are also various other experiments. 
«‘T propose at intervals of time to have the buds examined to see 
whether the Mite is still vigorous. This need be done, in the first 
instance, only with those where the strongest doses have been used.” 
—(8. P.) 
The following notes forwarded to me on January 14th of the 
present year give particulars of what has already been done at Woburn 
in regard to the Currant Mite; and also give information as to the 
varieties of Black Currant under observation, time of planting, date of 
appearance of infestation, and treatment of various kinds :— 
Wosurn Exprerimentat Fruit Farm. 
Black Currant Bud Mite. 
‘¢ Varieties Grown.—Baldwin’s Black, Black Naples, Lee’s Prolific, 
Carter’s Champion, Agden’s Black, Old Black. 
“Tiwe or Pxrantinc.—The majority were planted in trenched 
ground in the autumn of 1895 and the spring of 1896, but a few were 
planted in the autumn of 1894. 
Currants in lines between other crops is important, and likely to prove beneficial 
where the plantation was gradually formed, and the bushes may be obtained from 
various sources. The fact that ours are all planted in such lines may have been 
partially the means of preventing the more general extension of the ‘ Mite,’ which 
is at present mainly confined to the one plot of Baldwins, though instances are ob- 
servable in other plots, but scattered. Certainly it should be practised wherever it 
can be done conveniently, as bushes and trees of all kinds in single lines alternating 
with others ripen both wood and fruit better than when crowded into dense planta- 
tions.””—(L. C.) 
