98 THE CULTIVATION OF THE 



or accident, yield to this inexorable law of existence in 

 all that pertains to life on earth, and drop from the trees. 

 This dropping is termed among growers, the June Drop 

 or June Fall, and occurs on the Peninsula always, or 

 almost always, in the month of June, depending some- 

 what on the earliness or lateness of the season, but is 

 generally over by the twentieth to the twenty-fifth of 

 June. Until this June Drop has past, it is impossible to 

 accurately estimate the coming crop, but after it is over 

 a very correct estimate can usually be made, the curculio 

 and the elements being about the only disasters to 

 apprehend after this time. 



THE BORER. 

 The pernicious borer which has proved very 

 destructive to the peach in the United States, according 

 to Harris, whose description of the insect I give, is a 

 species oi ^geria, named Exitiosa, or the destructive. 

 Mr. Say first described it in the Journal of the Academy of 

 Natural Sciences of Philadelphia. The eggs from which 

 the borers are hatched are deposited in summer, on the 

 trunks of the trees near the roots, or higher up, or even 

 in the crotches of large branches. The borers penetrate 

 the bark and devour the inner bark and the sap-wood. 

 We know the seat of operations by the castings and gum 

 which issue from the holes. When these borers are 

 nearly one year old they make their cocoons either 

 under the bark of the trunk or of the root, or in the 



