its Blight and Remedy. 333 



Humuliis Lupulus, or Hop, were rendered unproductive from 

 the attacks of the ghost moth on the roots of the plant. The 

 imago, whether PapIUo or Phalae^na, or other winged insect, 

 as the bee, &c., may rifle the blossom of its sweets, but in 

 return it acquits itself M-ell by becoming the medium of a 

 transfer of the pollen. When the hop is struck by the fly, as 

 it is called by hop-growers, it will be found, on accurate 

 investigation, to be consecutive on some morbid change in the 

 hop-bine itself; an effect produced by some previous vicissi- 

 tude in the atmosphere. 



Perhaps, therefoi'e, the truth will be found to be this : — 

 the plant is blighted, as it is termed, by the wind, or some 

 destructive vicissitude in the atmosphere, and the transudation 

 of the saccharine matter is the consequence of a morbid 

 change thus superinduced. This saccharine secretion be- 

 comes the lure to the imago of the insect ; here its ova are 

 deposited : these, again, in process of time, become larv£B, 

 that, like the Egyptian locust, devour every green thing. In 

 this view of it the principal thing to be attended to is the pre- 

 vention of this morbid change by controlling and modifying 

 the condition of the atmosphere, in all probability the proxi- 

 mate or immediate cause. 



I do not mean to say that winged insects may not occa- 

 sionally riot on the bloom ; as the leaf-cutting bee and 

 others. The A^phis rosae, too, by clinging round the neck of 

 the young rosebud, seems " to drink its marrow up ;" and yet, 

 fenced as the moss rose, loveliest of flowers, is, with its pecu- 

 liar resino-caoutchouc investment, it is difficult to conceive 

 that these attacks of the aphides can reach its core ; and the 

 question is, whether such buds, independently of the aphis 

 altogether, would not prematurely fall, just as it happens with 

 many others unconnected with insect attack. The truth is, 

 such plants and such buds are sickly; and the appearance of 

 insects, though not exactly contemporaneous with the inci- 

 pient stage of the disease, promptly follows. 



The fact that plants grow most luxuriantly near a lightning 

 conductor, and are there maintained in a healthier condition 

 than elsewhere, proves that the maintenance of the electric 

 current between the earth and the heavens becomes an acces- 

 sary in its luxuriance. Viewing the honey-dew on the leafage 

 of the hop-bine as the presage of decay and index of disease, 

 and that this disease has been occasioned by some withering 

 blight consequent on a meteoi'ological change in the atmo- 

 sphere, because a mere flux of air, in its pneumatic relations, 

 which is simply mechanical, could produce no such morbid 

 change; and as this morbific meteorological feature in the 

 atmosphere might certainly be modified or controlled by 



