80 transactions of the american institute. 



The Oat Aphis. 



Mr. Carpenter, in answer to an inquiry wliether this pest of the farmer 

 is likely to abound this season, said he believed it would. It was very 

 destructive to oats and wheat last year in the eastern part of Westchester 

 county, and he now discovers that the j'oung' willow-shoots that grow 

 along the streams are covered with aphis, which he supposes to be the 

 same kind that destroyed the grain last year, as Dr. Fitch, entomologist, 

 says that they are ofteii found upon the early willow buds, and upon other 

 plants before their favorite food, oats and wheat, is forward enough for 

 them to depredate upon. If they increase in proportion this year as they 

 did last upon former years, farmers will have to abandon the cultivation of 

 small grain where this pest abounds. 



Dr. Trimble doubts whether the aphis now found upon apple and willow 

 buds is the same that destroys oats, because there are a great many varie- 

 ties, and some attach to one species of plants and some to another ; and 

 he does not think it would be good policy for a farmer to neglect to sow 

 grain because he saw aphides upon willows; nor is it worth while to de- 

 spair of growing grain because these destructive insects are troublesome 

 this year — they may not be so next'year, they have so mau}^ natural ene- 

 mies. The ichneumon flies may be so numerous as to destroy the aphis in 

 one year. As for a cure of the pest, there is none. Man is powerless 

 against such a tiny foe. He must wait patiently for time to bring the 

 remedy. Lady-bugs and birds feed upon aphides, and inchneumon pierce 

 them with their ovipositors, and thus they are destroyed. I can manage 

 the curculio; I cannot the aphis; but there is a power that can and will. 

 Let us not be discouraged. 



Ants AND Beetles — Remedy. 



Mr. Pardee read a receipt sent him from England " to destroy ants and 

 beetles." It is to dilute sulphuric acid, and slack lime, say half pint of 

 acid to half a bushel of lime, and put the powder in holes infested with 

 ants or black beetles. 



Prof. Mapes thought that lime prepared in the way recommended could 

 not var}' materially from conunon plaster of Paris — sulphate of lime. 



Bugs on Potatoes — Do they Cause the Rot ? 



A. ITogeboom, of Shedd's Corners, Madison county, N. Y., asserts dog- 

 maticallythat the sole cause of decay in the tubers is a bug upon the 

 vines. As his letter contains some practical hints upou cultivation, we 

 give it entire as follows: 



" I am greatly pleased with your short cut of disposing of the subject 

 of a sure panacea for the potato rot. It is time we were rid of this mooted 

 subject. Nearly twenty years ago I published what I knew to be the 

 cause of the blight of this valuable esculent. I will not trouble you with 

 my method of testing unmistakably the cause of the disease. 



" Fositioely it is nothing more nor less than the poison infused into the 

 juice of the vine by a little black bug. All other theories are simply Uto- 

 pian, that divert attention from all there is of any practical utility in the 

 treatment of the potato blight. The fancied discovery of any absolute 



