Pr ——” 
75 
that there are to my certain knowledge two or three distinct parasites of the curculio, 
‘The question arises whether we can so foster and encourage the parasite tat in time it 
will become stronger than the curculio, and eventually wipe it from the face of the earth 
altogether. I am trying a few experiments on a small scale to find out. Another curi- 
ous thing about the curculios is that they seem to come suddenly and to disappear suddenly 
Four years ago the corn weevil was very scarce in this locality, and the next year it 
- appeared in vast numbers. I found it on the white oak, the red oak and on quercus 
robur; on three oaks. That in itself wasa rather remarkable thing, as entomologists 
have hitherto noticed it only on the white or the red oak, I am not sure which, while I 
found it distinctly on three oaks. This year I have found traces of none, except one 
perfect insect I found on the 24th May, and the year before there were none. They 
seemed to appear one year and disappear entirely the next. In this Prof. Brodie’s notes 
agree exactly with my own. 
PEAR BLIGHT 
The President called upon Mr. McMichael, of Waterford, to speak on his experience 
with pear blight. 
Mr. McMicuaeu.—This is a subject in which I am very much interested, sadly 
interested this year and last year. I think it is now about twenty-five years since I 
began pear culture, and during that time we have had three recurrences of the pear 
blight. We would have about three years during which the blight was bad, and then 
perhaps five or six years freedom from it. We have also found that during the time it 
was bad in the pears it was also equally bad on the apple trees. In my pear orchards, 
where the blight has been worst, usually there has been an apple tree badly affected, and 
‘from that it spread very much worse to the pear trees. Where we have taken those 
‘trees out we have very much sooner got rid of the blight. Last spring—I may say that 
previous to that we had not been troubled for a number of years—I commenced cutting 
on it about the middle of July, and [I have reason to regret that I[ did not com- 
mence a month sooner. This year, in an orchard of about 150 pear trees that have been 
planted out nearly twenty years, the trees had suffered a number of years with a fungus 
which caused the wood to become very brittle and hard, and this spring, I think on the 
9th of June, I commenced working in them, and the points of attack would average from 
fifty to seventy-five or a hundred in each tree. They were in the twigs, and under the 
twigs. With one hand I broke the twig out; and with the other, with a paint brush 
filled with linseed oil, I went very thoroughly over the orchard, and I have done so four 
or five times since, and in scarcely an instance where this was taken out did the blight 
reappear. <A few days after that [ went into another orchard of trees, set out about 
eight years, which were remarkably thrifty, the growth long and the limbs just curling 
over and the tree full of bloom, but in those trees I found it very difficult to cope with the 
blight. The great difficulty is down on the limbs; these little twigs blighted, and in 
three or four days the bark would be colored, but by going over them every other day, 
just as the leaves began to turn, the art of taking these twigs off with a knife and paint- 
ing over with linseed oil, I was enabled to save the limb. I had been led to believe, by 
the treatise of Prof. Burrill, that all the virus entered through the bark, or where it was 
punctured, but in this orchard in nearly every instance it entered through the ends of 
these little matured leaves or the blossom, and, where these are cut out, just a little 
paring around it stops it. The bark being punctured the virus might easily enter again, 
but the oil has a tendency to keep that out by closing the pores. If that orchard of 
eight hundred thrifty trees had been left until now without taking those diseased portions 
off, [ might as well have burned every tree, but the present indications are that we shall 
be able to save it. One of the mistakes I made was in not cutting low enough; you 
have to cut three or four inches below any coloring of the bark, or the blight continues, 
In the other orchard, where the limbs are hard, there was no ditliculty in staying the 
blight. 
