FRUITS. — VARIETIES AND CULTURE. 



337 



often accompanied with larger winged ones of a black 

 color, having their bodies covered with white, cotton-like 

 matter. The wounds made upon the root by these insects 

 produce an increased flow of sap to the spot affected, and 

 these morbid enlargements are the result. Nursery trees 

 affected should have their roots soaked in soapsuds before 

 planting. Trees affected in the fruit garden may have 

 their roots partly bared, and a liberal application of char- 

 coal dust, ashes, or soapsuds, poured upon the warty ex- 

 crescences. Their presence gives the affected trees a yel- 

 low, unhealthy appearance. 



Woolly Aphis, or Apple-tree Blight, (Eriosoma lanigera,) 

 is found upon the apple tree. The female is a small, egg- 

 shaped, dull reddish-brown insect, with a black head, dust- 

 ed with white powder, and with a tuft of white down 

 growing from the hind part of the back, which makes a 

 colony of these insects look like a small patch of white 

 down. Each tuft contains a female and her young, which 

 last are of a pale color. In Europe, trees are often white 

 with these insects. Here they are generally found at the 

 base of twigs and suckers from the trunk, or where a 

 wound in the bark is healing. Scrape the bark of the tree, 

 if rough, and wash the tree, filling every crevice with a 

 solution of 2 pounds potash to 7 quarts of water, or Har- 

 ris' Composition, 2 parts soft soap and 8 of w r ater, with 

 lime enough to make a thick whitewash. Sulphuric acid, 

 mixed with ten times its bulk of water, is also recommend- 

 ed. This is the " American Blight " of English authors. 



Apple Bark-louse, (Aspidiotus conchiformis.) — An ob- 

 long, flat, brown, oyster-shell shaped scale insect, fixed to 

 the smooth bark, which it sometimes nearly covers. Its 

 length is about one-eighth of an inch. Under each of these 

 scales are from a dozen to a hundred minute white eggs, 

 which hatch in spring, and the young lice disperse them- 

 selves over the smooth bark, to which they attach them- 

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