162 



THE ILLINOIS FAKMEK. 



June 



Ed. Farmer : The cold blasts of winter have 

 at last been quenched, and the sweet smiles of 

 spring are now upon us. The icy crags have 

 melted away, and the ground is now covered 

 with verdure. Days, weeks, and months have 

 passed, yet no token has returned to quell the 

 ravings of a once firm and united, but now a di- 

 vidtd and distracted people. But admitting all 

 this to be true, we must not neglect to cultivate 

 the soil, and make preparations for sustaining 

 ourselves In the future, and furnishing our tel- 

 low men with the necessities of life. Agricul- 

 ture is a great source from which our country 

 has been benefitted. Let the farming class fail 

 to raise crops of medium good quality, and it 

 will be but a short time until it is felt by all per- 

 sons of every grade and profession. Let the 

 crops fail only for a season, and the mechanic, 

 the merchant, and business man finds a depravity 

 in the the times and a general stagnation of 

 trade. The season being favorable, in order to 

 raise good crops it is indispensable that the 

 farmtr should be furnished with good teams and 

 agricultural implements in general, so that he 

 may plant the seeds and cultivate the crops as 

 they grow. One important feature might be 

 added here : farmers should not seed more 

 ground than they are able to cultivate in the 

 proper manner. Many crops are materially in- 

 jured, and very often produce little or nothing, 

 f jr the want of proper culture. Western farmers 

 long since, and especially of late years, have 

 awakened to the sensibility of these facts. Many 

 who used to boast in the number of acres they 

 had enclosed, have either divided, rented, or sold 

 part of them to others, concluding that a small 

 portion well tilled is better than a large one im- 

 perfectly. Would it not be better for the general 

 class of farmers to have a small farm well culti- 

 vated, furnished with the necessary buildings, 

 and teem with the luxuries of the season, than 

 to have a large one poorly tilled and in very bad 

 repair ? Yours, American. 



Ashley, April, 1861. 



The above came too late for the May nuber. 

 —Ed. 



Ed. Farmer: I have been a constant sub- 

 scriber to your paper, called the Illinois Farmer, 

 since its first publication ; and as its principal 

 object seems to be the spread of useful knowl- 

 edge} amongst its readers, I had thought to give 

 a short sketch of nay experiments with the apple 

 tree-borer. 



More than three years ago, an apple orchard 

 of eight acres, which had been planted twelve 

 years, came into my possession. It had been so 

 much neglected that the borer had killed many 

 of the trees. On examination I found but two 

 trees in the whole orehard that the bcrer had 

 not worked in more or less. I then commenced 

 a war of extermination with the knife, a small 

 chisel, and a wii e about the size of a knitting 

 needle, and I spent eighteen days close applica- 

 tion in cutting out worms from those trees which 

 I thougiit likely to survive. From some 1 ex 

 tracted as many as eighteen or twenty worms 

 from a tree, and when I got through the job the 

 trees looked so mangled that it seemed as though 

 they could never heal over again. The next 

 spring I examined them again and cut out all 

 the worms that had escaped my notice the sea- 

 son before, and at that time a thought originated 

 with me that coal or gas tar was of such strong 

 scent that an application of it to the trunk of 

 the tree might have a tendency to arrest the 

 depredations of the borer. I then went to Jack- 

 sonville, purchased two gallons of coal tar at the 

 gas works for twenty cents, and with a painter's 

 brush applied it to each tree from the ground 

 upward, about four inches high, all around the 

 tree. I also at the same time applied the tar to 

 the forks of each tree. As the borer had done 

 much damage in those parts of the trees, I en- 

 deavored to drive him from that position also, in 

 which I have succeeded. The same season the 

 rains washed away the dirt more or less from 

 around the trees, and consequently the borer de- 

 posited some larva in some of them at tliesur-. 

 face of the ground beneath the tar, but in the 

 spring following I cut them out, dug away the 

 dirt two inches in depth around each tree, and 

 again applied the tar thoroughly, then repliced 

 the dirt and tramped it around each tree. Last 

 June I again applied the tar in the same way, 

 and I intend to follow the same process annually 

 hereafter. On or before the middle cf June in 

 each year the tar should be applied. As I have 

 driven the enemy to the walls, I am fully satis- 

 fied that if a proper application of coal tar is 

 annually made, it will keep the borer at a proper 



distance, at least from my orchard. There is 

 one thing more that I would mention, that is, 

 that instead of checking the growth of the frees, 

 the gas tar has seemed to have a tendi^ncy to 

 facilitate their gi-owth, and as far as that is con- 

 cerned, I could not wish to have trees grow more 

 thrifty than my trees have for the last three 

 years. M. J. Pond. 



Concord, Morgan Co., III., April 25, '61. 



We have no doubt of the value of the above, 



