BORERS 155 



to be especially acceptable to it. Such varieties as Ilubbard- 

 ston, Porter and Tolman Sweet may be badly attacked, while 

 adjoining trees of other varieties are little injured. 



Destroy the Wind-falls. — About the only generally accepted 

 thing to do for this pest is to destroy the wind-fall apples. It 

 one has any number of trees and attempts to do this by hand it is 

 a good-sized contract. But if it can be arranged to run hogs or 

 sheep in the orchard they will effectually clean up the wind- 

 falls. The one objection to these animals in the orchard is that 

 they do not always wait for the apple to drop before they eat it, 

 and they are likely to clean up not only apples but leaves on 

 low-hanging branches. In many old orchards, however, where 

 there are no branches near the ground this objection does not 

 apply. Hogs are especially adapted to this purpose. They 

 not only dispose of the drop apples, but by their rooting they 

 furnish a good substitute for cultivation and their droppings 

 will enrich the soil. They are particularly good in old orchards 

 on lands too steep and rocky to be cultivated. Occasionally they 

 make some trouble by barking the trunks and branches, but this 

 does not often happen if they are kept well watered and fed. 



Effect of Spraying. — The one other hopeful suggestion in 

 connection with this insect is that it seems to do relatively little 

 damage in orchards which are well sprayed. Some of the most 

 recent experiments seem to show that it is possible to do some 

 special spraying for it, using some poison combined with molasses 

 to make a sweet poison which, when sprayed upon the leaves, 

 attracts and kills the adult tiies in the same way that poison 

 Hy-paper kills our house tiies. Results have been conflicting, but 

 in some cases this treatment has reduced the damage. 



Cultivation. — It is also worthy of note that early spring 

 plowing, follow^ed by thorough cultivation, seems to reduce con- 

 siderably the damage from this pest. 



Borers. — The apple grower is likely to be troubled by two 

 species of borers, the fiat-headed and the round-headed apple- 

 tree borers. They differ principally in the fact that the 

 latter requires much more time to reach maturity than the 

 former, but either one will stay in the tree long enough to make 

 it look sick. All parts of the trunk and main branches are 



