90 FRUIT CULTURE. 



large, swollen anterior, a disgusting, ill-smelling 

 insect, which, when numerous, about the middle 

 of June and again in August, will consume all 

 the tissues of the leaves, stripping the trees en- 

 tirely bare of foliage. Hellebore, mixed in the 

 proportion of one ounce to two gallons of water, 

 and syringed upon the foliage, quickly destroys 

 the slug. Paris-green and kerosene solution 

 would doubtless be equally effectual. 



Grasshoppers sometimes eat the foliage of the 

 pear and are quite troublesome. Paris-green 

 will destroy them. 



DISEASES. 



Fire blight is an obscure disease which has 

 proved very destructive, especially in some sec- 

 tions of the West, destroying whole orchards, 

 without the hope of remedy. In New England 

 it has not proved so fatal, and yet in some years 

 it is so destructive that it has caused more dis- 

 couragement than all other evils combined. The 

 prevailing opinion is that it is caused by interior 

 fungous growth, commencing at the extremities 

 of the tree and working downwards, with its 

 poisonous influence, until the tree is killed. As 

 yet, however, the most skilled microscopists have 

 been able only to report conjectures. It is possi- 

 ble that parasitic growth may be only a conse- 



