Apple-Culture. — TJic ApJiis. 165 



apple-tree, and is sucking its vitals; or because a curculio punctures the 

 apple to make a nest for her egg, soon to hatch into an ugly worm. It is 

 man's prerogative to snatch the apple from the claim of these insects. It 

 is our purpose to show how this can be done, so far as the aphis mail, or 

 apple-tree aphis, is concerned. This insect is rightly named aphis, which 

 means an exhauster; for it sucks the life-blood from the tree. It began its 

 depredations in America about the close of the last century, and was 

 probably imported on young trees from Europe. Like all of the aphis 

 tribe, it is very prolific, as two broods at least are produced in the course 

 of a summer. If, in the latter part of May, we carefully raise the body of 

 the aphis, w-e can discover numerous eggs, destined in a few days to 

 produce thirty or forty lice, all eager for food and to reproduce their species 

 in the same ratio; so that a thousand-fold is a moderate calculation for the 

 increase each season. One who has not examined carefully will be sur- 

 prised to find how extensively our apple-trees are infested with these lice, 

 and how much they exhaust the vital energies of the trees. They can live 

 only on the fresh, juicy bark, and are, consequently, mainly found on the 

 trunks and branches of young trees, and the extremities of the branches of 

 the older ones. Within a few years, so great has been their increase, that 

 we have found them on the apples themselves, though the bark is evidently 

 their favorite home. Being nearly of the color of the bark, and only 

 about a tenth of an inch in length, a careless observer may pass them by 

 unheeded. If so, the diminished product of his trees, and the decaying 

 and dead limbs, must soon attract his notice. The sap, which should 

 support the foliage and fruit, sustains myriads of these lice. We have 

 seen the bodies and limbs of some apple-trees so thickly covered with 

 these insects, that myriads is no exaggerated term in which to speak of 

 them as existing on one tree. The female, after laying her eggs, dies ; but 

 the outer skin remains as a protection to the eggs. When first hatched, 

 the young have some motion, and disperse themselves over the tree. 

 While in the larva state, the young lice grow rapidly, and must greatly 

 exhaust the trees by drawing from them the nourishment necessary for 

 their growth. In a few days, they pass into the pupa, or chrysalis state, and 

 the females become fixed, never changing their location after they have 

 once become stationary, and seem merely a rough excrescence on the 



