﻿16 NINTH ANNUAL REPORT 



more or less effectual, but most of which are founded on isolated 

 experiments and on results due to other causes which the experiment- 

 ers did not understand. Indeed, one can scarcely pick up a horticul- 

 tural journal without finding during the summer months some new 

 remedy for THE Currant-worm recommended. But nothing equals 

 those I have referred to, and even carbolate of lime, which is quoted 

 by many authors as having been used with success by Dr. E. Worces- 

 ter, of Waltham, Mass., and as being less disagreeable, less cosily and 

 perfectly safe, was, after thorough trial, found by Mr. Saunders, who 

 is himself a chemist, and doubtless obtained the pure article, to be of 

 little or no avail. The only manner in which it can be successfully 

 employed, as Mr. M. W. Armington, of Providence, R. I., maintains, is 

 by sprinkling it on the ground, and then shaking the worms down, 

 when, if of full strength, it will prevent most of them from getting back. 



From the habit which belongs to this species of laying the eggs 

 in large numbers on a single leaf, we can employ another means of 

 counter-working its injuries which will not apply to the other two 

 worms. The newly hatched larv£e can find "plenty of food without 

 wandering off, and they have the habit when very young of boring 

 small holes through the leaf, as shown at No. 2 in Figure 4, and when 

 they become a little older, holes that are a little larger, as shown at 

 No. 3. It is evident that such holes as these may be readily recog- 

 nized, and the leaf be carried, larvae and all, far away from any cur- 

 rant or gooseberry bushes, and left to winter there, or — to make assur- 

 ance doubly sure — thrown into the fire. If, however, the young larvae 

 are removed a few rods away from any plant belonging to the botani- 

 <3al genus Rihes, they will be sure to die of starvation. For they can- 

 not feed on anything else, any more than the common Locust-borer 

 can live on an apple tree. As the eggs are laid in such large groups, 

 there will be but a few leaves bearing these newly hatched larvas to 

 remove from every bush," and early in the season they will be found 

 principally on the lower parts of the bushes, nearest the ground. 



"Wherever this Currant Worm has been introduced, there has 

 prevailed, from some cause or other, a popular superstition that the 

 currants grown upon the infested bushes are poisonous. This is a mere 

 delusion. They may be, and very probably are, unwholesome, just as 

 any other fruit would be perhaps more or less unwholesome, if grown 

 under such unnatural conditions as to seriously affect the health of 

 the tree ; but we have the authority of Dr. Fitch, himself a physician, 

 for believing fhat the common notion on this subject is entirely erro- 

 neous." 



