1854. 



NEW ENGLAND FAKMER. 



399 



For the New England Farmer. 



INSECTS LESTEUCTIVE TO PEACHES. 



Mr. Editor : — Dear Sir, — I send you by my 

 brother a specimea of an insect which last year 

 proved very destructive to my peaches, attacking 

 them on the first softening spot, two or three days 

 before the peach would otherwise ripen. They 

 would eat large holes in the peaches, and if they 

 were not gathered in time to prevent, the insect 

 would leave nothing of the fruit attached but the 

 skin and stone. I have frequently found a dozen 

 or more on one peach, eating in the same orifice ; 

 if disturbed they would drop to the ground, and 

 in their fall a few would fly away. You will per- 

 ceive that it is a beetle, about the size of the little 

 finger-nail, and woolly on the sides and belly. I 

 have read of the woolly aphis on apple trees, but 

 do not remember auy description of it. Can you in- 

 form me of the name of the animal ? It made sad 

 havoc with my early peaches last year, but by 

 killing what I could, and feeding the rest with 

 sweetened water in wide-mouthed vials, I saved 

 the majority of my later peaches, but not un- 

 scathed or untouched, as nearly all were bored or 

 punctured by them. 



This specimen is the first I have seen this sea- 

 son, and was at work upon a late apricot; my 

 earlier apricots ripen in the middle of July, bud- 

 ded from an old seedling on my grounds, planted 

 more than fifty years ago, by an old lady now 

 living. 



Our peaches in many places in this town are 

 becoming red a month before their time,while the 

 leaves scarcely show any change, except perhaps, 

 not so clear and dee}i a green as usual. Does this 

 forebode the yellows ? And should we dig them 

 up this fall, or wait another season for a clearer 

 declaration of the disease ? 



ABORTION IN cows. 



In the August Farmer of 1853, p. 356, com- 

 plaints are made of abortion in cows. 



High feeding has a direct tendency to produce 

 this ; if a cow has done so once, meal should be 

 kept from her for a month or two before the an- 

 ticipated period of abortion, or during the great- 

 er portion of the period of gestation. Many a fe- 

 male of the human species has only avoided the 

 same "mishap," by strict attention to diet. 



Too high feeding, with no hard work, often 

 produces an irritability not only of the nervous, 

 but of the circulating system in its minutest sub- 

 divisions as spread over secreting surfaces. There 

 is a greater tendency to this in the female system 

 than in the male. The mare fed on oats and but 

 little used will often become excessively snappisli, 

 or intensely cross. Withdraw her oats and she 

 loses this irritability ; or give her hard work and 

 the effect will be the same. If in the cow this ir- 

 ritability of the secreting surfaces, induced by 

 continued high feeding, is fed and fanned by meal 

 and grain, a tendency to injlammalion is produced 

 in the uterus, which during gestation is the most 

 irritable point in the system. Nature has no oth- 

 er way to relieve herself of this danger to the life 

 of the mother, when tlie meal and grain con- 

 tinue to flow in, than to prevent inflammation of 

 the womb and death, by evacuating the contents 

 of the uterus. The increasing irritabilty of that 

 OM^aij, excites its repeated contractions, as at the 

 fuU period, and abortion results and the mother 



is saved at the expense of the young. If the young 

 is carried to maturity, it survives, and the mother 

 dies of inflammation of the womb. 



There arc other causes of abortion. But this is 

 one quite likely to produce it — too high feeding 

 during the process of geslation ; and by too high, I 

 mean not too much in quantity, but too stimula- 

 ting in kind, to the circulation. 



Yours respectfully, 



Lewis S. Hopkins, M. D. 



Northampton, Aug. 15, 185-4. 



For the New England Farmer. 



PEACH FAILURE. 



Messrs Editors : — The scarcity of peaches the 

 present year has been supposed by some of us to 

 be the result of the excessive cold weather between 

 the 2-4th and 27th of March, or about the 7th of 

 May, last; but the strongest evidence that the fa- 

 tal cause was previous to that period is, that 

 among a consideralile number of our trees, not 

 counted, only three have peaches upon them; those 

 trees were located to the southeast of a range of 

 hills extending from northeast to southwest, and 

 the lower branches were covered by the drifting 

 snow in the disastrous storm of Dec. 29, 1853, 

 and remained covered through the excessive cold in 

 January following ; now those covered limbs are 

 loaded with peaches, while there is not another to 

 be seen upon a tree on all the rest of the premis- 

 es, in any situation, and 1 believe not in the neigh- 

 borhood. The above facts suggest an idea that 

 may be useful to peach growers, viz.; if some kind 

 of covering could be put on to those trees which 

 produc'e the best fruit, that would protect them 

 from the severe winter blasts, we might have a 

 family supply, if not more, every year ; as the 

 peach is a prolific bearer naturally, and resists the 

 inclemencies of an inhospitable clime to the last 

 extremity of its tender nature, never yielding to 

 the northern frosts and cold so long as its soft 

 Persian vitality holds out. It may be understood 

 that those drifts which covered the peach limbs 

 were thawed away previous to the cold weather 

 in March and May. S. Brown. 



Wilmington, Aug. 4, 1854. 



For the New England Farmer. 



MONTHLY FARMER FOR AUGUST. 



I have been so unusually busy during the past 

 month, that I have read only a portion of the 

 Farmer for August. Yet I have read enough to 

 find that the drought wliich is now blasting the 

 fields and shrivelling the corn has not dried up 

 the vigor or parclicd the spirit of the Farmer ; and 

 it is refreshing to turn a moment from the plod- 

 ding and disheartening Practical, to the more 

 tfuoyant and hopeful Theoretical, — irom the lieav- 

 ens that are "brass" to the promise of the "latter 

 rain." 



Not possessing the ability wliich janaldes mod- 

 ern critics of "Nl-w PuMieations," to express 

 opinions of productions tliey have not read, I 

 must acknowledge that I have read some three or 

 four articles in the August Farmer on the subject 

 of cutting hay and grain early, that, it seems to 

 me, from a careful exaiainati-jn of much of the 

 hay I liavc seen housed this year, are entitled to 

 at least a careful consideration ; and that many of 



