THE AMERICAN ENTOMOLOGIST. 



181 



lluis treat 111 tlicy slioiild be first severely cut back, when 

 they will make li growtii of young woo il . 



E. A. TiioMt'SOX. 



It only remains now, after giving all the evi- 

 dence that wo liavc space for in favor of (lie 

 tnoiiiiding system, as an cflectual remedy against 

 iIk^ Peacli-borer, to acliUice wliat lias been said 

 on tlicotliersidcof (lie question. Tlie reader can 

 then make up las mind for liiuiself, and govern 

 his own practice by tlie conclusions that he him- 

 self arrives at. It is to he lioped tliat he will not 

 he as much plagued and annoyed as the apocry- 

 phal Justice of the Peace, wlio complained that, 

 after the Flaintiirs counsel had made out a plain 

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

 sel for the Defendant made out just as plain a 

 case on the otlier 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 ill 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 

 jn'actical 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 the mounds, but to the general rarity of the 

 insect. In contirmation of (his theory, it may 

 be remarked that Mr. A. Mitchell has ten acres 

 of peach-trees that are not mounded immediately 

 adjoining the mounded peach-orchard at Du- 

 ipioin, belonging to the Winter Brothers; but 

 that, although he lias paid no attention to Avorm- 

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

 consequence. As, however, he has had from 

 (ifteeii to twenty hogs running in this 10-acre lot 

 for (he last two years, it may be supposed by 

 some that tlie worms are more or less com- 

 pletely destroyed by (hese hogs. But we heard 

 that Mr. K. A. Blanchardof Cobden, S. Illinois, 

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

 which he has not wormed for three years, and 

 among which no hogs have been sufTered to run ; 

 and yet that he finds no borers of any coiise- 

 (juencc in these trees. So, that in this case at all 

 events, we cannot attribute the paucity of xieach- 

 borers to the multitude of prairie-rooters. 



Finally we have been assured by Dr. Hull, that 

 several years ago he placed heaps of lime or of 

 ashes round tlie buts of all his orchard trees ; 

 and that it produced no efl'ect whatever towards 

 licading off the peach-borer. And we were told 

 by iMr Uansoin 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 effect 

 whatever. 



A single suggestion from ourselves, and we will 

 then leave this case to be decided by ilio Jury: 

 The mounded trees belonging to the Winter 

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

 mistake not, (hose owned by Mr. rullcn, were 

 all low-headed trees, so (hat 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 crolcli. 

 ^lay not this difl'crencc in the growtli of the 

 difl'erent trees respectively experimented ujion 

 by these gentlemen, explain the otherwise inex- 

 plicable fact of tlie diametrically opposite re- 

 sults arrived at in either case? The Peach- 

 borer prefers especially the but of the trunk. 

 By mounding up a low-headod 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 I\[olh of (his insect (o 

 deposit her eggs upon. 



As many fruit-growers, who are familiar 

 with the Peach-borer, have never seen the moth 

 that it produces, wc sulijoin here figures of the 

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



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. 

 They were scarce last fall. Evidently (hey 

 have fallen a prey to some cannibal insect." 



E^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 

 diamond and emerald completed this costume. 



