STATE REPORTS OF AGRICULTURE. 513 
miles annually, and must reach California in a few years, as they will 
find their way there in fruits and old fruit packages. No preventive 
of their ravages has yet been found. ; 
At the diseussion of the State Horticultural Society it was stated 
that grapes, much shriveled by long keeping, regain their plumpness by 
being dipped into hot water and honey, or even hot water alone. The 
Concord, Delaware, and Wilder, (Rogers’ No. 4,) appear to be the lead- 
ing varieties for the table, and the Ives for red wine. The Concord is 
productive to a fault, 4,000 pounds to the acre being not an uncommon 
crop. Such overbearing enfeebles the vines, and thinning out to a rea- 
sonable fruitfulness is advisable on all accounts. Mr. A. 8. Burrill, of 
Livingston County, has the largest pear orchard in the State, containing 
upwards of ten thousand pear trees. 
The report of Mr. Charles V. Riley, the State entomologist, comprising 
one hundred and fifty pages, is full of details in regard to the many 
insects that have attracted attention the past year, either by their mis- 
chief or their benefits. ‘The common apple-worm has been less injurious 
than formerly, and consequently the orchards were loaded with fair 
fruit. To destroy this insect it is recommended to place old pieces of 
rumpled rag or carpet in the crotch of the tree; the worms gather and 
spin up in them, and can be gathered and killed by wholesale, by 
scalding the rags, or running them through the wringer of a washing- 
machine. The apple-root plant louse has become troublesome i in some 
parts of the State. It is a woolly insect, visible on uncovering the 
roots, Which will be found in a knotted, "clubbed condition, many of 
them being merely a mass of excrescences, which so check the circula- 
tion of the sap that the tree finally dies. The best remedy is to drench 
the roots of an infested tree with ‘boiling-hot water, in quantities large 
enough to penetrate every part of the roots. No danger of injury to the 
trees need be feared, as it-is a general rule that vegetable organizations 
will stand a much higher temperature than animal, and_ boiling 
water has been effectually employed for many years to kill the borer in 
the collar of peach trees, and the onion maggot, without injuring the 
growing onions. The plum curculio, still master of the field, has found 
a new enemy in a minute yellow thrips that attacks it in a ‘vulnerable 
point, destroying vast numbers of its eggs. Itis hoped that in a few 
years these thrips will reduce the numbers of the curculio, as the lady- 
birds have done with the Colorado potato bug, and that minute insect, 
Acarus mali, with the common oyster-shell bark-louse of the apple 
tree. It is suggested that many noxious insects have been introduced 
from Europe, while the particular parasites that held them in check abroad 
were not introduced with them. Sometimes, in the case of the imported 
currant worm, these foreign noxious insects are attacked by native 
American parasites ; but the wheat midge has flourished for half a cen- 
tury without a single parasite troubling it. Dr. Fitch, the distinguished 
entomologist of New York, as well as Mr. Riley, recommends the im- 
portation of the three different Chalcis flies from the ether side of the 
Atlantic, as they are known to check it throughout all Europe. Ten 
years ago the asparagus beetle (Crioceris asparagi) was introduced into 
Long Island, and has spread till its ravages have reached $50,000 in a 
single county. Taken in season, its mischief might have been checked 
at the expense of a few hundred dollars. The annual damage by insects 
to all the crops of the Union is estimated at $300,000,000. 
Of all the insect foes of the Western farmer, however, the voracious 
chinch bug, formerly confounded with the Hessian fly, has become the 
most for rmidable ; nothing in the way of grain comes amiss to it. In 
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