418 MINNESOTA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



fruit a bed the second season, it may be renewed in the following 

 way. Plow along- each side of the row so as to leave a matted row 

 eighteen inches wide. If the plants, are closer together than six 

 inches, they should be thinned out with a hoe. The furrows along 

 each side of the row should be filled with well rotted manure, and 

 the cultivator should then be run between the rows so as to cover 

 up the manure. The bed should be kept cultivated for the remainder 

 of that season. 



It is well to be remembereed in setting out strawberry plants that 

 some varieties have perfect flowers, while others have pistillate 

 flowers. In setting out a bed, at least every third row should be a 

 variety with perfect flowers, so that the pollen from the flowers of 

 the perfect variety may fertilize the flowers of the pistillate variety. 

 It is better, however, for a beginner to plant a variety with perfect 

 flowers, as the Bederwood. 



Most of the varieties now offered for sale by nurserymen may be 

 had for about one dollar per hundred. There are a great many 

 varieties offered for sale, but only a few are considered standard 

 varieties. Among these are Warfield, Haverland and Crescent, 

 pistillate varieties, and Bederwood and Wilson, perfect varieties. 



Are Ants Injuring Trees. — Complaints concerning the injury 

 done fruit trees by ants are very common, yet in about 99 cases out 

 of 100 the ants are not doing the injury but merely accompany other 

 insects which do more or less harm. Almost always when ants are 

 found on a tree, a careful inspection will show that it is infested 

 with some kind of plant louse, psylla, or scale insect. All of these 

 insects excrete a sweet, sticky fluid, known as honey dew, which 

 forms a large item of food with the ants. In fact, the ants actually 

 raise the young plant lice and care for them, almost the same as we 

 do cattle, so that later on they may secure the honey dew from them. 

 This they secure by gently stroking the plant lice with their 

 antennae, when they readily give up small drops of the coveted 

 liquid. 



In the case of many plant lice which live both on the roots and 

 leaves of trees, the ants often may be found carrying the lice up 

 onto the trunk, if observed early in the season, which I have noticed 

 with the black peach aphis. Recently I met a man from Vermont 

 who was complaining of ants injuring his pine trees. No doubt the 

 pine trees were affected with a scale, which occurs very commonly 

 on them, known as the pine kermes. This, like many of the larger 

 scales, gives off a similar secretion while it is still young and be- 

 fore the scale becomes hardened, and is attended by ants for this 

 reason. Very often these obscure scales, though doing the tree con- 

 siderable injury, remain unnoticed, and the damage is laidto*he 

 account of the ants' nests when they can be found, thus preventing 

 them from aiding the plant lice and scales. The plant lice and 

 scales may be destroyed by spraying with kerosene emulsion or 

 whale oil soap. A. D. S. 



