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Mr. Mallory. — Mr. Bristol's experience has been about the same as mine. 



Mr. Dempsey. — What is your soil ? 



Mr. Bristol. — Principally limestone gravel, rather low, a portion of it is sand. It 

 is a little point of land that runs into the Bay. Perhaps it would range in depth from 

 about twenty inches up to four feet. 



Mr. Dempsey. — Does it frequently dry out ? 



Mr. Bristol. — It does in the summer. 



Mr. Dempsey. — Do your trees start to grow again in the autumn t 



Mr. Bristol. — I have not observed that. My Greenings have grown hardier than 

 they were. The Northern Spies have all looked healthy up to this past year ; and now 

 they are all affected by this same disease of the bark growing dark. I had one young 

 tree just beginning to bear last year, as healthy as I ever saw ; it grew in six feet of soil 

 near my house. This spring I went to it, and four inches above the ground it was per- 

 fectly dead — girdled. I manured it pretty well. 



Mr. Dempsey. — Did you ever search for insects? 



Mr. Bristol. — I have searched, and have never found anything. I have been told 

 that the trees show signs of sawdust ; but I have never seen anything of the kind. I 

 have frequently taken my knife and pared off a foot of bark, and found no insect. The 

 trees are fully exposed to the north wind. 



Mr. Beadle — Have you noticed whether, if in the spring of the year, you dig a hole 

 there two feet deep in the soil, it will fill in with water? 



Mr. Bristol. — No ; no water ever stands there. 



Mr. Saunders. — I think if Mr. Bristol will look under the bark of that sample he 

 has brought hfre he will find plenty of evidences of the work of the borer, which clearly 

 points to the fact that the injuries have been caused by it in that piece of tree. But I do 

 not understand whether the unhealthiness of which Mr. Bristol complains is to be attri- 

 buted altogether to the; bark difficulty, or whether it may not have been caused this year 

 by a fungus on the under side of the leaves which is very prevalent around London this 

 year, and which I have noticed here too. The leaves, I have observed in a good many 

 instances, are now falling off. This bark injury I think may fairly be attributed to 

 borers ; and the proper way for Mr. Bristol to proceed to prevent it in future would be 

 for him, about the months of June or July — before the time the borer appears — to coat 

 the trees with a solution of soft soap thinned with a water solution of washing soda to 

 the consistence of thick paint and applied with a brush. The alkaline wash forms a 

 coating over the bavk and destroys the eggs of what insects may be about it, besides pre- 

 venting the borer depositing its egg on the bark. 



Mr. Dempsey. — You who live in the country can just as well set up a leach and 

 thin your soft soap with lye. 



Mr. Saunders. — Lye will do. The idea is to get the alkaline strong enough. Lye 

 alone might be too strong, but would do with soft soap. If you just put lye on the trees,' 

 the first shower will take it all off, but if you mix it with soft soap it will dry into a 

 kind of varnish on the tree. You require a dry day for applying it in order that the pre- 

 paration may dry. The season for applying these things would vary for different dis- 

 tricts. The insects would appear later in the Ottawa district than with us. The egg 

 state lasts somewhere about a week ; and if this wash is applied any time during the ex- 

 istence of the egg state, it destroys the eggs. As a preventive measure the application 

 needs to be made before the insects appear. When the eggs hatch the young grubs bur- 

 row through the bark into the interior to work between the exterior bark and the sap 

 wood, and when they once get in there you cannot do anything with them. 



Mr. Denton. — I would like to ask Mr. Saunders if in this disease he refers to, the 

 leaves curl before dropping ofi"? 



Mr. Saunders. — Yes. 



Mr. Mallory. — In respect to what Mr. Bristol says, there are some who seem to 

 think the trouble is from a borer or an insect. I have watched this thing carefully for 

 ten years, and I think I can safely say it is no insect that can be seen by the naked eye 

 which causes it. In the first place a small spot appears on the side of the tree. The 

 next year this extends to a circle of an inch or two. It will take three or four years per- 



