NOTES ON THE DRY SUMMER OF 1896. 175 



literally infested last summer, no surprise need be felt, if, during 

 the next year or two, our orchards lose some of their most 

 promising trees. 



Towards the close of June, the larch was attacked by a 

 somewhat similar insect. In one small plantation in the valley, 

 the lower branches were so plagued with the Larch-Aphis 

 ( Chermes laricis) that from a distance the waxy filaments secreted 

 by, and protecting the body, looked like a coating of hoar frost. 

 In less than a month after the appearance of the insects, so 

 pronounced was their work that the tips of the newly-formed 

 shoots became as brown as if they had been scorched by fire, while 

 the leaves fell from the topmost branches until they were as bare 

 as in the winter. Before leaving the larch, it will be necessary 

 to place on record two or three peculiarities noticed in a four or 

 five-year-old plantation, immediately below the Ponsanooth 

 railway viaduct. The lower portion of the plantation abuts on 

 the river, and occupies what, a few years ago, was a fairly rich 

 meadow. Here, last summer, growth was at about the average 

 rate, — the roots finding plenty of subsoil, to tide the trees over the 

 drought. From the river the plantation extends up the hillside, 

 where the soil is very loose and stony. In this portion the 

 shoots produced last summer are scarcely half as long as those 

 on the trees near the river. Not only so, but while growth 

 goes on in most trees to about the end of August, almost the 

 whole of the young larch-trees standing on the loose soil ceased 

 growing by the beginning of July, remaining in a state of 

 apparent inactivity until the middle of August, when, responding 

 to the reviving showers, the branches once more underwent 

 elongation, several inches being added. Even now the summer 

 and autumn increments of growth can be traced. These same 

 trees also bore a plenitude of cones, whereas those by the 

 riverside had none. Further, the cones exhibited, to an 

 unprecedented degree, the phenomenon known as proliferation, 

 a leafy shoot of from two to six inches in length being produced 

 at the apex of each. 



During the whole of the summer the appearance of the 

 alder was pitiable. June was scarcely ushered in before the 

 leaves began to shrivel and turn brown, and by the first week 



