78 TRANSACTIONS OF THE AMERICAN INSTITUTE. 



Mr. R. G. Pardee. — I would cultivate and manure highly, and let them 

 live. 



Dr. Trimble. — I understood Mr. Fuller to say at a previous meeting, that 

 the best time to set out new beds of strawberries was in September. 



Mr. Carpenter. — I have looked into this subject, and think the reason is 

 that the vines have blossomed in the fall. My vines that blossomed last 

 fall have no blossoms this spring. 



Mr. Robinson. — I never saw more blossoms on my vines in the spring as 

 I saw on them last fall, and this spring they are as full of blossoms as 

 ever. 



Remedy for PtosE Bugs. 



Mr. Solon Robinson read a letter from D. Petit, Salem, N. J., giving a 

 remedy for this pest of the farmer. 



"In the discussion of the American Institute Farmers' Club, I perceive 

 that pest to the farmers and fruit growers, the 'rose bug,' was introduced 

 by Mr. Robinson, 



" I will endeavor to give a remedy which, if carried out fully, will prove 

 a satisfactory one; for I, too, have had my cherries ' eaten to the stone' by 

 this pest, and have 'had them b^^rrowedin apples,' and have had my grape 

 blossoms destroyed by them. To rid myself of them I tried and adopted 

 the following simple remedy, which, so far as I have carried it out, has 

 proved entirely successful, viz : 



" I ascertained, in the first place, that one of the vegetables they most 

 preyed upon was radishes, or radish tops. When they had been most 

 troublesome the year before, on my grape vines, I sowed near by, early in 

 the spring, a patch with radish seed. These blossomed about the time the 

 bugs just made their appearance (which is here on or about the first day of 

 summer; I have known them to come as late as the eighth), and would 

 attract or draw them from most other vegetables. I had a large tin cup 

 made with a funnel-shaped tin to go inside, but not so deep as to reach the 

 bottom. I then went around every day about midday during their season — 

 which was from two to three weeks — bent over the radish tops and shook 

 the bugs into the funnel-shaped tin, which let them down to the bottom of 

 the tin cup, from which they could not extricate themselves, and they were 

 destroyed. By this mode, if well attended to for one season only, they may 

 be so far eradicated as not to be very troublesome the next year. It is 

 now about twenty-five j-ears since I first tried the experiment, and I have 

 cleared two farms of these pests, so that we make but little account of 

 them now, only to note their yearly return. 



Mr. Pardee said he had often destroyed these bugs when they invested 

 rose-bushes, by shaking them into a pan of water. 



The Black Blight of Pear Trees. 

 Mr. Solon Robinson. — Some weeks since Wm. H. Pettit, of Elkhorn, Wis- 

 consin, wrote to the Club for a remedy for the black blight in pear trees, 

 which attacks the bark upon the body of the tree, which turns black and 

 dies, and the wood under it often decays so as to kill the tree. He now 

 sends us the following letter upon the same subject: 



