INJURIOUS INSECTS. 63 



tlie orchardist. Tliese are chiefly the borer, the caterpillar, and 

 the canker worm. 



The apple Borer is, as we usually see it in the trunks of the 

 apple, quince, and thorn trees, a fleshy white grub, which enters 

 the tree at the collar, just at the surface of the ground, where 

 the bark is tender, and either girdles the tree or perforates it 

 through every part of the stem, finally causing its death. This 

 grub is the larva of a brown and white striped beetle, half an inch 

 long, i^Saperda bivittata,) and it remains in this grub state two 

 or three years, coming out of the tree in a butterfly form early in 

 June — flying in the night only, from tree to tree after its food, 

 and finally depositing its eggs during this and the next month, 

 in the collar of the tree. 



The most eff"ectual mode of destroying the borer, is that of 

 killing it by thrusting a flexible wire as far as possible into its 

 hole. Dr. Harris recommends placing a bit of camphor in the 

 mouth of the aperture and plugging the hole with soft wood. 

 But it is always better to prevent the attack of the borer, by 

 placing about the trunk, early in the spring, a small mound of 

 ashes or lime ; and where orchards have already become greatly 

 infested with this insect, the beetles may be destroyed by thou- 

 sands, in June, by building small bonfires of shavings in various 

 parts of the orchard. The attacks of the borer on nursery trees 

 may, in a great measure, be prevented by washing the stems in 

 May, quite down to the ground with a solution of two pounds 

 of potash in eight quarts of water. 



The Caterpillar is a great pestilence in the apple orchard. 

 The species which is most troublesome to our fruit trees ( Clisio- 

 carapa americana^) is bred by a sort of lackey moth, difl'erent 

 from that most troublesome in Europe, but its habits as a 

 caterpillar are quite as annoying to the orchardist. The moth 

 of our common caterpillar is a reddish bro^vn insect, whose ex- 

 panded wings measure about an inch and a half. These moths 

 appear in great abundance in midsummer, flying only at night, 

 and often buzzing about the candles in our houses. In laying 

 their eggs, they choose principally the apple or cherry, and they 

 deposit thousands of small eggs about the forks and extremities 

 of the young branches. The next season, about the middle of 

 May, these eggs begin to hatch, and the young caterpillars in 

 myriads, come forth weaving their nests or tents in the fork of 



round each tree one peck of charcoal dust, and propose in the spring to 

 cover it from the compost heap. 



"My soil is a strong, deep, sandy loam on a gravelly subsoU. I cultivate 

 my orchard grounds, as if there were no trees on them, and raise grain of 

 every kind except rye, whick grain is so very injurious that I believe three 

 successive crops of it would destroy any orchard younger than twenty 

 years. I raised last year in an orchard containing 20 acres, trees 18 years 

 old, a crop of Indian com which averaged 140 bushels of ears to the' 

 acre." 



