28o The Canadian Horticulturist. 



(;raiti\(; vouxii tri:i:s. 



No. 4S9. 



SiK, — I have a niimbi r of small apple trees that I want to graft next spring. Would it 

 be best for me to take them up this fall and store them in the cellar, or to let them stand 

 until next spring and then graft them and set out in the nursery rows. They are scattered 

 around tlie fields and I have to take them up before grafting. 



Ira N. lU'RT, Keswick Ridye, N.B. 



If the seedling apple trees you refer to are small, suitable for whip grafting, 

 the best way would be to take them up this fall and store them in green sawdust 

 in the cellar until the convenient time for grafting them, and when this operation 

 i.=i finished, they may be put back again in the sawdust until the time for plant- 

 ing out in the nursery rows. If, however, the trees are of a larger size, so that 

 they would require cleft grafting, we would advise planting them out first or in 

 the places in the orchard where they are to remain, and to leave the grafting until 

 they have made a vigorous growth. They could then be grafted in the May or 

 June following. 



BURDOCK STALK BORER. 

 No. 490. 



Sir, — I send you a borer found at work among my burdocks, boring the stalk. .Surely 

 he is a friend that ought to be encouraged ? — W. 



IieJ>/j' by Prof. Fletcher, Ottawa. 



Your post card is just received and also the accompanying caterpillar which 

 is that of Gortyna cataphracta, a species closely related to the potato stalk borer, 

 Gortyna nitela. It is always sent in every year from various localities as a borer 

 in different kinds of plants ; among others, I have had specimens sent me as 

 injurious to reed canary grass, and a few other large-stemmed grasses, including 

 Indian corn, tomatoes, lillies, potatoes, sunflowers It is sometimes sufficiently 

 abundant among, tomatoes to be noticed by a casual observer, but, as a rule, 

 escapes detection, except to the quick-sighted, on account of its feeding inside 

 the stems. When one stem has been hollowed out, the caterpillar leaves it and 

 bores into another. When full fed, which is about this time of the year, it bur 

 rows a short distance into the ground, and changes to a yellowish-brown chry 

 salis, from which the perfect insect, a pretty, tawny moth marked with dark 

 lines, emerges in about a month. 



Amongst fruits, I have found this caterpillar troublesome in the young 

 shoots of raspberries, and this year a very unusual attack was brought under my 

 notice in which the fruit of a gooseberry bush was hollowed out, several berries 

 being destroyed. 



The fact of the caterpillar you send having been found attacking bur- 

 dock, cannot, I fear, entitle it to the designation of friend. Its friendship, I fear, 

 would be too much akin to that shown by the Saxons to the ancient Hritons, 

 and if there were no I'icls and Sc(jts, in the shape of l)urdocks, they might pay too 



