296 



THE AMEBICAN 



THE SLUG ON PEAR AND CHERRY TREES. 



"The insect genei-ally called the pear or cheny 

 ti'ee slug {Selandria cerasi, Peck) has in our 

 g-rounds been so few and so little injurious this 

 season that we had almost forgotten to notice it, 

 until, passing- the orchard of one of our neigh- 

 bors a few days since, we saw his pear trees 

 almost entirely denuded of their foliage by rea- 

 son of the slug. It is a little singular that any 

 cultivator can neglect to guard against sucla 

 results, when merely dusting the fohage with 

 lime, plaster, or even the ordinary dry soil, will 

 at once destroy the insect. The tirst brood is 

 now about over, but a second one may be looked 

 for from the fifteenth to the last of this month, 

 and they should be carefully watched for and 

 destroyed by all who wish health and vigor to 

 their young pear or cherry trees." 



The above is from a cori-espondent of the 

 Journal of Agriculture, who writes over the 

 signature of "Addi," and whose articles abound 

 in common sense, and are usually very correct; 

 but, in stating that the Pear and Cherry Slug can 

 at once be destroyed by ordinary road dust he 

 has made a very pardonable error, and has been 

 deluded either by hastj^ observation or by the 

 unreliable testimony of others. 



Though not very troublesome 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 the Michigan Central railroad, 

 leaving nothing but the seared and yellow leaf 

 robbed of its parenchyma. "We found that the 

 popular remedy was 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 liimself of his 

 sand-covered coat. In fact he naturally sheds 

 this coat several times during his growth, and if 

 the sand is applied at the proper time it proves 

 a positive advantage to him, by stiffening his 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 hai-mless, and even plaster will prove 

 ineffectual, 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 Chen-y Slug, but rely on lime, 

 which will burn through the skin to the flesh ; or 

 on white hellebore water, which will poison. 



APPENDIX TO .IOINT-"WORM ARTICLE PUBLISHED 

 IN VOL. I, NO, 8. 



The 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. 156 and 167) 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 Phylloptera '\ 

 ohlongifolia, 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 March, 1869, we trans- 

 mitted to him specimens of both sexes, with 

 such facts regarding them as we possessed, and 

 upon receiving them he deferred sending the 

 Paper to Philadelphia until he should find 

 time to add these facts, with a description 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 loth, 1869, 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 dealth the Paper was found un- 

 finished. 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. Ci-esson 

 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 



