THE AMERICAN ENTOMOLOGIST. 



181 



iliM^ troiiloil tlicy should be first severely cut back, when 

 IIhv will iii;ik(_':i growth of young woocl. 



E. A. Thompson. 



It (i}i!y romaiiis now, after giving' all the cvi- 

 (li'iuc tliat wc have space for in favor of the 

 iiioiiuding sj'steni, as an effectual remedy a<fainst 

 I he reach-borer, to adduce what has been said 

 oil iIjc other sidooftlic question. The reader can 

 tluii make up his mind for himself, and govern 

 his own practice by the conclusions that he him- 

 self arrives at. It is to be hoped that he will not 

 be as much plagued and annoyed as the apocr}-- 

 plial Justice of the Peace, who complained that, 

 alter the Plaintitrs counsel had made out a plain 

 case on his cnvn side of the question, the coun- 

 sel for the Defendant made out just as plain a 

 case on the other side ; and yet it was utterly 

 impossible for the poor man to decide in favor of 

 both of them ! 



It is allowed on all hands, among the peach 

 growers in South Illinois, that of late years, for 

 some unexplained reason, the peach-borer has 

 not been near as destructive or common as for- 

 merly. Hence it is contended by many good 

 practical observers, and among others we believe 

 by Dr. Hull of Alton, that the almost complete 

 exemption from borers in mounded peach-or- 

 chards is due, not to any special effect produced 

 by tlic mounds, but to the general rarity of the 

 insect. In confirmation t)f this theory, it may 

 be remarked that Mr. A. Jlitchell has ten acres 

 of peach-trees that arc not mounded immediately 

 adjoining the mounded peach-orchard at Du- 

 quoin, belonging to the Winter Brothers; but 

 that, although he has paid no attention to worm- 

 ing his trees, he finds no worms in them of any 

 consecpience. As, however, he has had from 

 fifteen to twenty hogs running in this 10-acre lot 

 for the last two years, it may be supposed by 

 some that the worms are more or less com- 

 pletely destroyed by these hogs. But we heard 

 that Mr. E. A. Blauchardof Cobden, S. Illinois, 

 lias a lot of unmounded peach-trees six years old, 

 which he Jias not wormed for three years, and 

 among which no hogs have been suffered to run; 

 and yi't that he finds no borers of any conse- 

 quence in these trees. So, that in this case at all 

 events, we cannot attribute the paucity of peach- 

 borers to the multitude of prairie-rooters. 



Finally wc have been assured by Dr. Hul 1, that 

 several years ago he placed heaps of lime or of 

 ashes round the buts of all his orchard trees ; 

 and that it produced no effect whatever towards 

 heading off the peach-borer. And we were told 

 by Mr Ransom of St. Joseph, Michigan, that he 

 has given the mounding system a fair trial upon 

 his own peach-trees in that State; and that his 



experience is that it produces no beneficial cfloct 

 whatever. 



A single suggestion from ourselves, and wc will 

 then leave this case to be decided by iho Jury: 

 The mounded trees belonging to the Winter 

 Brothers and to Mr. Thompson, and also, if we 

 mistake not, those owned by Mr. Pullen, were 

 all low-headed trees, so that the mound reached, 

 or sometimes even covered, the crotch. On the 

 contrary. Dr. Hull's peach-trees have a clear 

 trunk of some four feet, so that the mound 

 would not here come any where near the crotch. 

 !May not this diflcronce in the growth of flic 

 different trees respectively experimented upon 

 by these gentlemen, explain the otherwise inex- 

 plicable fact of the diametrically opiiosite re- 

 sults arrived at in either case? The Peach- 

 borer prefers especially the but of the trunk. 

 By mounding np a low-headed tree, you leave 

 it — strictly speaking — without any trunk at all, 

 and consequently without any but to the trunk ; 

 and you thus annihilate what is more especially 

 the favorite spot for the Moth of this insect to 

 deposit her eggs upon. 



As many fruit-growers, who arc familiar 

 with the Peach-borer, have never seen the moth 

 that it produces, Ave subjoin here figures of the 

 two sexes (Fig. 126) of this insect by way of tail- 



[Fis 120.] 



piece, that to the left (1) representing the fe- 

 male, and that to the right (2) the male. 



Note. — Since the above was in type, we have 

 received the following very interesting state- 

 ment, in confirmation of the fact that the Peach 

 Borer is becoming exceedingly scarce in South 

 Illinois, from Judge Brown, of Villa Ridge: 



" The Peach Borer has almost entirely dis- 

 appeared from these parts. In digging into 

 more than fifty trees of two and three years' 

 growth, I found not more than two worms. 

 Tliej' were scarce last fall. Evidently llicy 

 have fallen a prey to some cannibal insect." 



O^The Empress of Austria appeared at the 

 last State ball at Vienna, in a new dress com- 

 posed of the green and golden wings of South 

 American Beetles, sewn with gold thread on 

 a tissue of white silk. A splendid suite of 

 diamong and emerald completed this costume. 



