PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. 



THE cultivation of fruit in America has of late years 

 become of so much commercial importance, as well as do- 

 mestic interest, that no apology is necessary for offering to 

 the fruit-growing community a work of which they must 

 have long felt the need. 



The amateur who plants a city lot, and the farmer who 

 devotes a portion of his land to the cultivation of those 

 fruits which furnish from month to month pleasant and 

 changeful variety to the table, as well as those who grow 

 fruit to supply the home and foreign markets, are alike in- 

 terested in making this pursuit a success. 



Injurious insects are so universally distributed that there 

 is no part of this continent where fruit-culture can be 

 profitably carried on without some effort being made to 

 subdue them. Among the insect hosts we have friends as 

 well as foes, and it is to the friendly species that nature has 

 assigned the task of keeping in subjection those which are 

 destructive; these, in many instances, do their work most 

 thoroughly, devouring in some cases the eggs, in others the 

 bodies, of their victims. It is not uncommon to find the 

 antipathy to insects carried so far that a war of extermination 

 is waged on all, and thus many of man's most efficient allies 

 are consigned to destruction. 



The information necessary to enable the fruit-grower to 



