VI. DISEASES OF FRUIT-TREES. 



ways, and all the sorts of ants are equally mischievous. 

 Those \vhich have their nests in little hillocks on the 

 ground j that is to say, the small ant, is the sort which 

 most frequently display their mischievous industry in 

 the gardens. I once had a melon-bed that underwent a 

 regular attack from a community of horse-ants, as the 

 country people call them ; that is to say, the largest ant 

 that we know any thing of. I know nothing but fire or 

 boiling water, or squeezing to death, that will destroy 

 ants ; and, if you pour boiling water on their nest in the 

 grass, you destroy the grass ; set fire to a nest of the great 

 ants, and you burn up the hedge or the trees, or what- 

 ever else is in the neighbourhood. As to squeezing them 

 to death, they are amongst the twigs and roots of your 

 trees and plants : they are in the blossoms, and creeping 

 all about the fruit ; so that, to destroy them in this way, 

 you must destroy that also which you wish to protect 

 against their depredations. Ants injure every thing that 

 they touch ; but they are particularly mischievous with 

 regard to wall-trees : where they attack successively bud, 

 blossom, leaf, and fruit. There is no method of keeping 

 them from the wall. Hiey may be kept from mounting 

 espaliers by putting tar round the stem of the tree, and 

 round the stakes that the limbs are tied to 5 but there is 

 no keeping them from the wall, unless by killing them. 

 Mr. FORSYTE recommended to make the ground very 

 smooth near the bottom of the tree that they attacked j 

 then to make smooth holes with a sharp-pointed stake or 

 iron bar, down into which, as he says, they will go ; and 

 then he recommends to pour water into these holes, and 

 drown them. MONSIEUR DE COMBLE recommends the 

 laying of sheep's trotters or cow-heels with the skin on, 



