BLIGHT. 349 



and the greater its darkness, the more impudent 

 appear to have been the pretensions of knavery. 

 We may even now, perhaps, swallow a few mat- 

 ters, the arcana of the needy or the daring, in the 

 various compositions of powders, draughts, and 

 pills, which are not quite agreeable to our palates 

 or our stomachs ; but our forefathers had more to 

 encounter, as they had more faith to support them, 

 when they were subjected, for the cure of their 

 maladies, to such medicines as album gr&cum, or 

 the white bony excrement of dogs, bleached on the 

 bank, for their heartburns and acidities ; the powder 

 produced from burnt mice, as a dentifrice ; mille- 

 pedes, or woodlice, for nephritic and other com- 

 plaints ; and the ashes of earthworms, administered 

 in nervous and epileptic cases. 



Our apple-trees here are greatly injured, and some 

 annually destroyed, by the agency of what seems to 

 be a very feeble insect. We call it, from habit, or 

 from some unassigned cause, the " American blight" 

 (aphis lanata) ; this noxious creature being known 

 in some orchards by the more significant name of 

 ''white blight." In the spring of the year a slight 

 hoariness is observed upon the branches of certain 

 species' of our orchard fruit. As the season ad- 

 vances this hoariness increases, it becomes cottony ; 

 and toward the middle or the end of summer the 

 under sides of some of the branches are invested 

 with a thick, downy substance, so long as at times 

 to be sensibly agitated by the air. Upon examin- 

 ing this substance, we find that it conceals a multi- 



