258 TRANSACTIONS OF THE 



Give your nurseryman gond prices and you will afterwards, for years, be 

 glad you did, for you will have noble trees, and he a soothed conscience. 



Mr. Lawton spoke of the value of means to restore fertility to exhauted 

 land, or give it to land which never had it, by sowing such plants as will 

 begin in them, such as the Canada thistle, which will open the ground by 

 its roots and rapidly add its organism to the poor land. 



Mr. Robinson. — To exterminate them from the land which they have 

 settled in is one of those works of celebrity like those of the fabled Sisi- 

 phiis. For in a good settlement of these thistles, let a smart man set down 

 along side of them and cut them up with his knife for three years, and he 

 shall have a good plenty left ! The least bit of root springs up again. 



Subjects for next vieeting. — "Spring flowers, seeds, plants and trees" 

 continued, and " Drainage." 



The Club adjourned. 



H. MEIGS, Secretary. 



February 21, 1859. 



Present — Messrs. Pell, Bullock, Bruce, Chilson, Lawton, Solon Robin- 

 son, Daniel C. Robinson, Peters, Fuller, Veeder, Gore, J. D. Wright, J. 

 B. Wright, Doughty, B. Pike, Stacey, Roberts, Witt, Hardenbrook, Brower, 

 Pardee, Clark, Jennings, Burgess, sen., Dr. Shelton, Dr. Holton, Prof. 

 Nash — seventy-five members in all. 



R. L. Pell in the chair. Henry Meigs, secretary. 



[Revue Horticole. Paris, Jan. 1859.] 



DES FRUITS VEREUX. {Wormy Fruit.) 



Fruits ivith pits are destroyed, in great numbers, by Lepidoptera, (four- 

 winged, their larvae are caterpillars,) which prick the fruit when it has 

 about one-fourth of its growth, in the month of May (in France), in order 

 to put an egg in each. The insect always selects the finest fruit. From a 

 worm it becomes a caterpillar, then forms a cocoon, then is a butterfly. The 

 most common enemy is Carpocapsa Pomona, whose butterfly is hardly 

 larger than the winged moth which has fed on woolen cloth. Whether the 

 fruit stays on its branch or falls off, is immaterial in the development of 

 this insect. What makes it the most disastrous enemy of garden fruit, is 

 that immediately after its birth, which always precedes the complete matu- 

 rity of most pears and apples, it begins to lay its eggs, and this causes 

 greater damage than the first generation did. The larvse thus laid, towards 

 the end of summer, hide in the crevices of bark, in their cocoons, till next 

 season. The only way to save our fruit from their ravages, is to hunt for 

 and destroy them, in every tree. Perseverance will do it. Small trees 

 are easily saved ; large ones are more difficult, and ought to be examined 

 twice a day from May to the harvest, and to make it a law not to leave a 

 fallen fruit on the ground ; there the worm crawls out, if the season be 

 unfavorable, becomes a chrysalis, and a butterfly next May. 



