80 AMERICAN BLIGHT. 



stand in a tank of cold water for half an hour, when all 

 the blights will leave it and swim on the surface of the 

 water. For hops, none of these plans are available ; and, 

 unless a way could he discovered of increasing the number 

 of the blight-eaters, I fear the chance of discovering a re- 

 medy is very small. 



I don't know why our brethren on the other side the 

 Atlantic are charged with sending us the greatest pest of 

 our orchards, but so it is. We call an insect the AMERI- 

 CAN BLIGHT, which, for aught I could ever make out, may 

 have come from China or Botany Bay. However, a name 

 once in vogue will have its day; and one might as well 

 attempt to turn a pig in an entry as argue against an esta- 

 blished belief; so American blight it shall be. In very 

 hot weather you may now and then see this blight on the 

 wing ; it has just the look of a bit of cotton, or a downy 

 seed, floating in the air, and is driven by every breath of 

 wind quite as readily. If you catch and examine it, you 

 will find it to be just like the plant-louse which infests our 

 rose-trees, &c. ; but, unlike all other plant-lice, it is cloth- 

 ed and muffled up with cotton-wool, in such quantities, 

 that you would at first have no more idea that the lump 

 contained an insect, than that the mass of clothes on a 

 stage-coach box in winter, contained a man. Some folks 

 wonder what can be the use of so much clothing; lam 

 not much of a theorist, but I should guess that the vermin 

 came from the torrid zone, and Nature kindly furnishes 

 this garment to protect them from the cold of our climate. 



These blights wander wherever the wind pleases to 

 carry them ; and if bad luck should drive one of them 

 against the branch of an apple-tree, there it will stick, 

 creep into a crack in the bark, bring forth its young, and 



