THE HOP ^PHIS. 



From an Address delivered before the Annual Meeting of the State Agricultural Society- 

 Albany, February 8th, 1805. 



The insect which the past season attracted tlie most notice and did the 

 most damage in our State, was the Aphis or Plant-lonse upon the hops. 

 Although the liop has been growing, both wild and cultivated, in this 

 country, from time immemorial, I am not aware that this enemy has ever 

 attacked or been observed upon it, until two summers ago, when it sud- 

 denly made its appearance in excessive numbers; and in consequence of 

 its advent, the two past years have been the most disastrous to the exten- 

 sive hop growers in the central section of our State, which they have ever 

 experienced. In some yards the hops have not been picked, and in other 

 yards a portion of those that have been gathered, it is said, ought never to 

 have been dried and put up for market, they are so small and worthless; 

 whilst the best that have been grown are of an inferior quality, the bitter 

 principle, on which their value depends, being deficient, according to the 

 published reports, to the extent of from 15 to 25 per cent. 



The newspapers and agricultural periodicals have abounded with notices 

 of this failure of the hop crop. From the extended accounts which some 

 of these publications have given, it would appear that there are three dif- 

 ferent maladies with which the hop vines have recently become affected, 

 namely, the Aphis or plant-lice, the honey dew, and the black blight. The 

 plant-lice are soft pale j'cllowish-green insects, not so large as the head of 

 a pin, which remain stationary upon the under sides of the leaves, crowded 

 together and wholly covering the surface. The honey dew appears on the 

 upper surface of the loaves, as a shining, clear and transparent fluid, sticky, 

 like honey smeared over the surface. The black bliglit also occurs on the 

 upper sides of the leaves and resembles coal dust sifted upon and adhering 

 firmly to them, or the leaves look as though they had been held in the 

 smoke of a chimney until they had become blackened over with soot. 

 This black blight is deemed to be a kind of fungus growing from the leaves, 

 analogous to the rust and smut in grain, and it is stated that in some hop 

 yards sulphur has been dusted over the leaves to kill or check its growth, 

 but without having the slightest effect upon it. 



Which of these maladies is the most pernicious, it would be difficult to 

 judge from the published accounts, one writer seeming to regard tiie Aphis 

 as the principal evil, whilst another wholly ignores this insect and dwells 

 upon the black blight as being the cause of the failure of the crop. And 

 it is not a little amusing to observe how very wise the reporters to some 

 of the newspapers appear in giving an account of these diseases, and what 

 a display of scientific lore they make, when their statements betray to us 



