PEACH AND THE PEAR. lOI 



branches, but more especially near the ground, hunt for 

 the borer and pull him out and destroy him by any 

 method you can command ; by a knife blade, a piece of 

 wire, your finger, or a stick, or what not. Clean the hole 

 and bark about it, stuff up the hole with common soap, 

 or with the common carbolic soap of the shops, or soft 

 soap, and soap the bark of the tree, or apply a tree- 

 wash. In this way, and in this way only, can you get 

 rid of this pest. Maj. B. T. Biggs says, gas lime is 

 obnoxious to the borer and a quantity may be spread 

 around the tree. Young trees should be especially 

 watched, and their bark kept clean. In warm weather 

 have them gone over once or twice, and rubbed 

 down with a coarse cloth, or a broom or brush, and 

 in this way you will keep them free with little trouble 

 from worms, and have a healthy orchard as it gets older. 

 Thrips, which Harris rather places among bugs, but 

 which may be the European {Aphis Persicca) Peach- 

 Louse. They draw large quantities of the sap from the 

 leaves from numerous punctures, and disarrange the 

 functions of the leaves, and hence, the food of the tree, 

 and again thus injure not only the crop of fruit, but the 

 tree itself. They make reddish tumors on the leaves 

 which naturalists, according to Harris, call galls — 

 because they resemble those formed in the same way, as 

 in oak galls. These tumors on one side, and hollows on 

 the corresponding opposite side make it look like curled 



