356 



NEW ENGLAND FAEMER. 



Aug. 



thing, except that in the last two there is an in- 

 termixture almost too small to mention, of other 

 ingredients. 



Silicon. — This is the basis of sand, flint and 

 quartz rock. It is a brownish powder, a little re- 

 sembling the paint called Spanish brown ; is very 

 abundant in nature, constituting probably nearly 

 one-fifth of the entire globe. 



Nitrogen. — A colorless gas. About four-fifths 

 of the air is nitrogen. The remaining fifth is 

 mostly oxygen. It constitutes a part of all plants 

 and animals ; is supplied to the soil in the form 

 of ammonia and the nitrates, as they exist in 

 guano, animal manures,vegetable fertilizers, green 

 crops plowed in, &c. — American Farmers' Mag- 

 azine. 



THE BARK-IiOUSB. 



Noticing that considerable attention is now 

 given to this insect, we have read with interest a 

 long article on the subject, published in the Ca- 

 nadian Agriculturist. The writer says : 



"The insect appears as a small scale, adhering 

 firmly to the bark of the tree, not larger than a 

 timothy seed, of the color of buckwheat, and, if 

 examined in the spring, will be found exactly un- 

 der that scale, a miniature muscle-shell, filled 

 ■with round white eggs, which can be easily sepa- 

 rated and counted to the number of forty or fifty ; 

 by June, these are hatched out, and, if watched, 

 appear as nimble, small, white insects, capable of 

 quick movements, and the next change the ob- 

 server finds is that all over the bark new whitish 

 red blotches or dots are seen, which, if examined, 

 prove to be the new insect in its shell, the pro- 

 duct of one of those white eggs, found in the old 

 scale, the outward covering of the female insect, 

 which, authorities say, after certain changes fixes 

 itself to the tree, deposits its eggs, dies, and 

 leaves its shell as the abode of its young, which, 

 like the parent, in due time quit that shelter to 

 go through the changes peculiar to insect life, to 

 be a torment and a perpetual annoyance in the 

 unceasing round of insect transformations. 



"Without microscopical observations it is im- 

 possible accurately to describe the way the insect 

 feeds on the tree. The damage done is readily 

 seen, but how the whole twig and limb become 

 diseased by the mere outward puncturing is 

 strange. You break — and it breaks too easily — 

 a twig, and all through it is brown and evidently 

 unhealthy. The part swells, and the bark grows 

 corrugated and tumefied, the branch loses the 

 clean, healthy appearance that it ought to have, 

 and all this from the operation of a small minute 

 scale, only stuck, as it were, to the bark. Evi- 

 dently the circulation is impeded, and a process 

 of decay has commenced." 



The writer regards this parasite about as fatal 

 to the apple tree as the midge is to wheat, and as 

 one that cannot be avoided. He has worked hard 

 to exterminate it, but in spite of all his efforts the 

 disease is increasing among a portion of his trees. 

 Of his own labors and of the remedies tried he 

 thus speaks : 



"When I begun to plant an orchard some ten 

 years ago, I had no difficulty with my trees, they 



throve like willows ; but an addition I made 

 some years after never prospered nigh so well, 

 taking many times the attention the first got, all 

 from the parasite increasing in abundance ; still I 

 never gave in. I dug and delved, I manured and 

 dressed, kept away weeds, and permitted nothing 

 but root crops to grow amongst them, and that 

 even seldom ; I scraped and diligently washed 

 both limb and twig, nay I may say truly, painted 

 with all the washes recommended, tobacco juice, 

 soft soap, bleacher's soda, but in Tain ; I could 

 not exterminate, only keep under, in a sort of a 

 way, the numerous insects. Latterly I abandoned 

 that wash, and have only used bleacher's soda, 

 calcined sal soda, diluted with lime water, yet 

 they beat me, and this spring you may conceive 

 how diligent I must have been, when with my own 

 hands, I washed away 20 lbs. of that soda, and 

 now at this present moment many of the branches 

 are as black as any hat, home-made or imported." 



Mr. Cole recommends, in his fruit book, one 

 part of soft soap with four of water, and a little 

 fresh slaked lime ; or a solution of one pound of 

 potash to two gallons of water. Apply about the 

 first of June. A lye of wood ashes is good. 



To be of service these applications must be 

 made .with brush or swab to the insects on every 

 branch and twig ; a task practically impossible ia 

 case of large trees. 



VISITING IN A MEXICAN HACIENDA. 



A little before dark we came to the hacienda of 

 Santa Rosita de Cocoyotla, another sugar planta- 

 tion, which was to be our headquarters for some 

 days to come. We presented our letter of intro- 

 duction from the owner of the estate, and the two 

 administradors received us with open arms. We 

 were conducted into the strangers' sleeping-room, 

 a long, barrack-like looking apartment, with stone 

 walls and a stone floor that seemed refreshingly 

 dark and cool. We could look out through its 

 barred windows into the garden, where a rapid 

 little stream of water running along the channel 

 just outside, made a pleasant gurgling sound. 

 Appearances were delusive, however, and it waa 

 only the change from the outside that made us 

 feel the inside cool and pleasant. For days our 

 clothes clung to us as if we had been drowned, 

 and the pocket-handkerchiefs with which we 

 mopped our faces, had to be hung on chair-backs 

 to dry. Except in the early morning, there was 

 no coolness in that sweltering place. In one cor- 

 ner of our room, I discovered a brown toad of 

 monstrous size, squatting in great comfort on the 

 damp flags. He was as big as a trussed chicken, 

 and looked something like one in the twilight. 

 We pointed him out to the administrador, who 

 brought in two fierce watch-dogs, but the toad set 

 up his back and spirted his acrid liquor, and the 

 dogs could not be got to go near him. We stirred 

 him up with a bamboo, and drove him into the 

 garden, but he left his portrait painted in slime 

 upon our floor. 



Our beds were like those in general use in the 

 tropics, where mattrasses would be unendurable, 

 and even the pillows became a nuisance. The 

 frame of the bed has a piece of coarse cloth 

 stretched tightly over it ; a sheet is laid upon 



