296 



THE AMERICAN 



THE SLUG ON PEAR AND CHERRY TREES. 



" The insect generally called the pear or cherry 

 tree slug {Selandria cerasi, Peck) has in our 

 grounds been so few and so little injurious this 

 season that we had almost forgotten to notice it, 

 until, passino; the orchard of one of our neigh- 

 bors a few days since, we saw his pear trees 

 almost entirely denuded of their foliauc bv rea- 

 son of the slug. It is a liltlc singular tlial any 

 cultivator can neglect to guard against such 

 results, when merely dusting the toliag<> with 

 lime, plaster, or even the ordinar}- dry soil, will 

 at once destroy the insect. The tirst brood is 

 now about over, but a second one may be looked 

 for from tlie fifteenth to the last of this month, 

 and (hey should be c'arefully watched for and 

 destroyed liy all who wish health and vigor to 

 their young pear or clierry trees.'' 



The above is from a correspondent of the 

 Journal of Agriculture, who writes over the 

 signature of "Addi,"' and whose articles abound 

 in common sense, and are usually vei-y correct ; 

 but, in stating that the Pear and Chewy Slug can 

 at once be destroyed by ordinary ^'oad dust he 

 has made a very pardonable erroi^s and has been 

 deluded either by hasty obsei'vation or by the 

 unreliable testimony of otlierss. 



Though not very troublesQtne in the West, this 

 insect often does much damage in the more 

 eastern States, and it has this year absolutely 

 stripped many orchards of every vestige of green 

 along the line of tl^e Michigan Central railroad, 

 leaving nothing biit the seared and yellow leaf 

 robbed of its parenchyma. We found that the 

 popular remedy wak sand, there being an abun- 

 dance of this commodity along the Lakes ; but, 

 as our friend Mr. Wm. Saunders, of London. 

 Ontario, has abundantly demonstrated, and as we 

 have ourselves proved, simple sand does not kill. 

 It sticks to Mr. Slug, so that he frequently falls to 

 the ground, and thus it appears to kill him, but 

 he very soon manages to divest himself of his 

 sand-covered coat. In fact he naturally sheds 

 this coat several times during Ms growth, and if 

 the sand is applied at the proper time it proves 

 a positive advantage to him, by stiffening liis old 

 and useless skin and thus enabling him the bet- 

 ter to crawl out of it. If it be applied a day or 

 two before the proper time to moult has come, 

 then, like a good philosopher, determined to 

 make the best of the circumstances, he concludes 

 with some reluctance to let the soiled habit go 

 before it is quite worn out. Common road-dust 

 is equally harmless, and even plaster will prove 

 inefi'ectual, unless applied before the last moult 

 takes place ; for after this moult the slug bids 

 adieu to his slimy coat. Moral: Never use sand 

 or road-dust for the Cherry Slug, but rely on lime, 

 Avhich will burn through the skin to the flesh ; or 

 on wliite hellebore water, which will poison. 



APPENDIX TO JOINT-WORM ARTICLE PUBhlSRED 

 IN VOL. I. NO. S. 



Tlie following Paper is the only one of a truly 

 scientific nature which our deceased Associate 

 left behind him. It was originally written as 

 an appendix to the "Joint- worm " article pub- 

 lished in No. 8 of our first volume, and is twice 

 referred to (pp. 1.06 and li>7) in that article; 

 but, after preparing it, Mr. Walsh concluded 

 that it was too bulky, and of a too purely scien- 

 tific character, to interest the majority of our 

 readers. He therefore concluded to more thor- 

 oughly elaborate it, and send it to Philadelphia 

 for publication in the Transactions of the Ameri- 

 can Entomological Society. Accordingly he 

 notified Mr. Cresson, Secretary of that Society, 

 that he should send him such a paper for publi- 

 cation. About this time we were fortunate 

 enough to breed, from the eggs of Phyllojitera 

 oblongifolia, DeGeer, both sexes of the curious 

 little parasite, Antigaster mirabilis, n. sp., which 

 is described at the close of this paper, and which 

 Mr. Walsh had, till then, only known in the ? 

 sex. On the 23rd of Marcli, 1869, we trans- 

 mitted to him specimens of both sexes, with 

 such facts regarding them as we possessed, and 

 upon receiving tliem he deferred sending the 

 Paper to Philadelpliia until he sliould find 

 time to add these facts, with a de?cription of ^ 

 Antigaster. But for a long time subsequently 

 Mr. Walsh was too sick to do any but the most 

 urgent and necessary work. When once his 

 health had improved, and he had succeeded, in 

 a measure, in attending to his accumulated 

 correspondence, he wrote to Mr. Cresson, under 

 date of October 15th, 18(3'J, as follows: " I hope 

 in about a week from now to send that article. 

 There is about two days' work to do on it, and 

 for the last two months I have been trying in 

 vain to get two leisure days to myself." Suffice 

 it to say that, from that time to the day of the 

 fatal accident, he never found the needed leisure, 

 and after his death the Paper was found un- 

 fiuished. Aware of Mr. Walsh's intention, we 

 immediately sent this paper to Mr. Cresson for 

 publication in the Transactions, accompanied 

 with such of our own correspondence with the 

 deceased as related to the matter. 



Upon being recently informed by Mr. Cressou 

 that the amount of other MS. on hand was such 

 that this Paper could not well be published there 

 before next winter, and that there was a di - 

 position to stop publishing for a few years so as 

 to accumulate the income to increase the capital 

 of the Society; we concluded to publish it in 

 our own columns, and thus carry out the 



