148 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



" Unseemly stains succeed ; which nearer viewed 

 By microscopic arts, small eggs appear, 

 Dire fraught with insect life ; alas ! too soon 

 ffhey burst their filmy jail and crawl abroad, 

 Bugs of uncommon shape — " 



*very much like their respected parents, in all but size and 

 wings ; and blest with a remarkable appetite. This they imme- 

 diately set about satisfying, and never being weaned, keep up a 

 continual sucking, till overtaken by the fatal shower of soap- 

 suds or kerosene. These deadly poisons to their whole race will 

 reach them, even if snugly clustered beneath the broad leaves 

 of the squash-vine, or clinging to the topmost waving twig of 

 the apple-tree. Even their more active cousins, the leaf-hoppers, 

 who feast uninterruptedly upon the succulent leaves of the vine, 

 and at the slightest alarm, spring off in a glancing shower, may 

 yet find their shady retreats invaded by an oily flood they can 

 neither stem nor stomach. 



But the exhausters of the sap are only a part of the great 

 army that forage upon our apple-tree. While these are levying 

 contributions upon the milk and honey, another detachment is 

 cutting off the wood, another stripping it of its foliage, and still 

 another drawing an extensive internal revenue from its fruit. 

 Let us look, for a time, to the main body, who, by their heaps 

 of saw-dust, must have been long engaged. Near the surface of 

 the ground, we find little concretions of reddish castings adher- 

 ing to the bark, or piled up in a heap, on the ground, beneath a 

 small hole, from which the sap is exuding. These are chips, 

 and the excretions of the apple-tree borer, the two-striped or 

 white Saperda, a very handsome, long-horned beetle, of a bluish- 

 white color, with three chocolate-colored bands upon its back, 

 extending from head to tip, and a little less than three-quarters 

 of an inch in length. He is not so often met with in his beau- 

 tiful adult condition, because he flies only by night, and after 

 his change from a motionless pupa to a winged and active beetle 

 is effected, he waits until after dark to make his exit from the 

 larval burrow. If a sharpened wire, barbed near the point, be 

 inserted in the small opening indicated by the castings and 

 twisted about, it will very often bring forth the fleshy, whitish 

 larva. Or, by cutting away the bark and the wood, around the 

 hole, with a knife or gouge, the grub may be exposed and 



