The Canadian Horticulturist. 167 



on in the season. An effectual remedy for this louse, which is very wide-spread 

 and is doing incalculable mischief to the apple orchards in Ontario, is the appli- 

 cation of soft soap to the parts affected, during the first week in June. This 

 may be done with a scrubbing brush, or even with an old broom, if only the 

 trunks are affected ; but if the insect has spread itself over the branches of the 

 trees, it will be necessary to spray with a strong mixture of soft soap and water. 

 The mixture may be improved by the addition of a crude carbolic acid. Prof 

 Cook advises the following method of preparing it : One quart soft 

 soap and two gallons of water heated to the boiling point, when one pint of 

 crude carbolic acid is added, stirring the solution at the same time. Kerosene 

 emulsion, and washing soda in water, are also excellent. 



The Cherry and Pear Tree Slug is only too familiar to our pear grow- 

 ers. It is a brown larvae, covered with slime, and possessed of an excessive 

 number of legs, between eighteen and twenty-two. These ugly slugs eat only of 

 the cuticle of the leaf, thus causing it to turn brown in three or four weeks. 

 They pass down the tree and form their cocoons in the ground, from which the 

 tiny black flies, less than a quarter of an inch long, emerges either in the month 

 of August, or of June, of the following year. One of the best and easiest ap- 

 plied remedies for the pear tree slug is liquid hellebore, made by dissolving one 

 pound of the powder in twenty-five gallons of water. This should be sprayed 

 over the affected trees as soon as the larvae appear. This substance has the 

 double advantage of killing the insect by contact as well as by being eaten. 



The Slugs or worms which eat the 

 foliage and fruit of the gooseberry 

 bushes, belong to another species of 

 the same family, and may be destroyed 

 by the application of the same remedy. 

 The cocoons of these are hid among 

 the roots of the bushes, and, when 

 buying from nurserymen, great care should be taken not to introduce the insect 

 upon one's premises with the plants. This habit of making their transformations 

 under the ground, near the roots of the plants, no doubt explains the success 

 which some of our subscribers have had in ridding themselves of the currant 

 worm, by a liberal application of ashes along their rows of currant bushes, for 

 these no doubt are distasteful to it. When only a small quantity of the liquid 

 is needed, it may be made by mixing it in the proportion of one ounce of helle- 

 bore to two gallons of water. 



The Borers. — There are three kinds of borers, all of which are only too 

 commonly met with in our apple orchards, especially in those that are not kept 

 in a vigorous condition. These are the flat-headed borer {chrysobothris femorata\ 

 and two species of the long-horned beetles, viz., saperda Candida^ and saperda 

 cretata ; the first of these only remains one year in the tree, but the others con- 



