APPLYING COMPOSITION. 85 



the winter season; if such survive the effects 

 of frost and severe weather, and are not 

 otherwise destroyed before spring, they then 

 issue forth, increase very rapidly, and in such 

 numbers that they commit very extensive 

 injury; and it is sometimes with great diffi- 

 culty that they can be destroyed, and not 

 without a deal of trouble and expense, as 

 well as considerable damage done to the trees 

 in effecting their destruction. For w T hen the 

 trees are infested during the time that the 

 wood is young and tender, the means which 

 are then obliged to be employed in order 

 to suppress the insects frequently destroy 

 or damage the foliage, and sometimes the 

 young wood, to the great injury of the tree, 

 when in many instances it might have been 

 avoided. 



In order to avoid such bad effects I have 

 recourse to the following practice. I always 

 have the wall trees entirely loosened from 

 the wall every year at the winter pruning, 

 and the wall and tree swept clean with a 

 common hand brush; such of the walls as 

 have been coloured by paint, coal tar, or 

 other means, must have all the places which 

 are made bare by pulling out nails, &c. re- 

 coloured previously to anointing the tree 

 with composition; but whether the wall be 

 coloured or not after it is swept clean, let it 

 be well washed with urine, applying it with 

 a brush, being careful that as little as pos- 



