152 An American Fruit- Farm 



body. Spray for the fruit-tree is a mixture which 

 smothers, drowns, heats, chills, or, when taken as 

 food by the insect or the fungus, poisons the enemy 

 yet does not injure (at least seriously) the plant 

 that is sprayed. 



The enemies of the fruit-farm attack root, bark, 

 stock, leaf, bud, flower, and fruit, — that is, the 

 whole plant, but rarely every part at one time. 

 The rootworm strips the grape-root of bark in 

 a spiral from end to end, beginning seemingly at 

 the tip. For a few days it lies inert in transition 

 from worm into larva when (about mid- June) it 

 emerges as a beetle, deposits its eggs close to the 

 ground beneath the loose bark of the vine-stock, 

 climbs or flies to the leaf and begins its zigzag 

 course of eating its way through life, marking the 

 leaf as it moves. It flies from leaf to leaf and for a 

 time enjoys quite a sociable life with its kind. It 

 is very prolific. The deposit of eggs is not made 

 directly it leaves the ground but at some time after 

 it has flown about. It cuts the leaves into shreds. 

 The leaf hopper sucks the leaf from the under side, 

 leaving the whole vineyard as brown and sere as if 

 a fire had passed through it. Fungi, or mildew, 

 black rot, brown rot, grow on the fruit and absorb 

 its juices. The rosebug eats the buds of the grape 

 blossom, leaving the vineyard fruitless. The 

 curculio lays its egg in the blossom of the apple, 

 the cherry, the peach, the pear, the plum, and the 

 worm feeds on the young fruit, poisoning, defacing, 

 shrivelling it to a hard, skinny cover stretched over 



