Feb. 1, 1899.] 
THE TEOPICaL agriculturist. 
529 
In spite of all that has been said in favour of 
pruning, many will, no doubt, assert, and with truth, 
that many kinds o£ fruit trees, if left entirely to 
themselves, and which never feel the knife or the 
support of the wall or espalier, will yet, even when 
young, produce an abundance of fruit year after 
year. Nevertheless, while not douting this state- 
ment, the fact remains that, on the whole, and in 
the long run, trees which are carefully trained and 
pruned while young, will repay the grower by a 
more regular and abundant supply and a better 
quality of fruit than those trees which are left en- 
tirely to their own natural devices. 
The fact that the old trees of farm and cottage 
orchards are observed to bear, year after year, an 
exuberance of luscious fruit of excellent quality is a 
natural result, firstly, of the probable early training 
and pruning of the trees when young and easy of 
manipulation ; and, secondly, of the arrival at 
maturity of these trees when, the acme of their 
vegetative vigor and growth having been passed, 
and the ultimate natural form and size of the tiee 
attained, this vegetative growth at length, in the 
fulness of the trees' maturity, has been equalled by 
that of the reproductive organs— the flowers and the 
fruit ; this process resulting in the striking of an even 
balance between the two forces mentioned in the 
opening paragraphs of this article — the vegetative and 
the reproductive; a return to the more perfect ways 
of Nature being the result. And such trees in iheir 
maturity are aways more beautiful to the eye than 
when, in their younger state, they are under the 
domination of the knife and the wall. The superio 
quality of the fruit in such orchard trees, as com- 
pared with the wild crab-trees of a similar shape and 
mode of grow h, and bearing an equal abundance of 
fruit, is due to their training and pruning when 
young, and all the other methods of cultivation 
throughout their life, and to their descent from an 
age-long cultivated ancestry. 
The point more particularly to be insisted on here 
is that it is during the youthful active vigour of the 
tree, when the vet^etative growth is at its strongest, 
and when naturally the tree is striving upwards to 
that maturity of size and form when it will be best 
fitted for the bearing of fruit, that this natural 
vegetative vigour must be firmly bat judiciously 
restrained, side by side with other methods of culti- 
vation, in order to the premature production of a 
superior quality of fruit both in the early and the 
later periods of the tree's existence ; but the tree, 
having passed a certain age, and beginning to enter 
on maturity, may be left largely to itself to workout 
its own salvation in the attainment of an equilibrium 
between its vegetative and reproductive growth, 
ir. C. WorsdeU, F.L.S — Gardene/s'- Chronicle, 
ANOTHER FKUIT ENEMY. 
A NEWLY INTRODUCED ScALE-lNSECT (DiASPIS (AuLA- 
CASPIS) AMYGDALI.) 
It may be well to state at the commencement that this 
pest is quite distinct from the San Jos6 scale-insect 
(Aspidiolus peniiciosus, Comstock) of the American 
fruit-growers, vyhich up to the present innnient has 
engaged the attention of the whole fruit-growing 
industry of the world. But it belongs to the same 
destructive family of scale-insects (Coccidos), and 
being of western Asiatic origin, inhabiting a region 
with a climate somewhat resembling our own. gives 
us far greater cause for alarm than did its sub-tro- 
pical relative — the San Jose scale. 
IIlSTOIlY OF InTUODUCTION. 
In January of tho present year a consignment 
of several lumdred Japanese Cherries (Prunus pscudo- 
ccra'iua) was imported into this country from Japan, 
which ultimately fell into many hand.s, and were 
disseminated over the British Isles without any 
knoAledgo they wore badly infested with scale, la 
tlie following April two of the plants from the coq- 
signment were submitted to the writer for the pur- 
pose of identifying the insects upon them, which 
proved to be the destructive scale-insect, Diaspia 
amygdali, of Tryon. 
Distribution. 
It was originally discovered by Professor Tryon in 
Australia on the Peach. Mr. Green records it from 
Fiji, and says that in Ceylon it feeds on many 
species of plants, but that it is partial to the Pel- 
argonium. Professor Cockerell found it injurious to 
a large number of plants in Jamaica, including the 
Grape and Peach. The same author also received 
it from Trinidad. It was in 1892 that it first at- 
tracted attention in the United States, where it 
is a serious pest to the Plum and the Peach. It 
was also found there on a dwarf-flowering Almond 
and fifty Tea-bushes imported from Japan ; the 
latter were destroyed {vide Ps>/cJie, March, 1898, pp. 
190, 191). Professor C. Sasaki, of the Agricultural 
College, Tokyo, describes it (under another name) 
as a pest to the Mulberry-trees in Japan. Seeing 
that the insect was orgiually discovered in Australia, 
it might be supected to be indigenous to that 
country ; but I agree with ])r, L. O. Howard and 
the late Dr. C. V. Riley (Insect Life, vol. vi., pp. 
287,-.'95), that Japan is very probably the original 
home of the species, as we have now three authentic 
instances of its occurence on freshly-imported plants 
from that country .—Qat-deneis' Claonicle. 
PINE-APPLE INDUSTRY OF THE 
BAHAMAS. 
After sponge, the most important productions of 
the Bahamas are pine-apples, of which no less than 
nearly 5,000,000 were shipped to the United States 
in 1897. The report of the Acting Colonial Secre- 
tary states that they are chiefly grown in the islands 
of Eleuthera, San Salvador, and long Island ; but 
nearly every island of considerable size possesses 
soil which is suited to the cultivation of pine-apples. 
The species produced is known as the "scarlet', 
or ''red Spanish," and is of inferior quality. It is, 
however, a good traveller, and four-fifths of the out- 
put of these islands go to the canning factories of 
Baltimoi-e. The methods of cultivation are exceed- 
ingly primitive. As many as '20,000 plants are cram- 
med into an arce of more or less rocky ground, 
and it is only during the last three or four years 
that chemical fertilizers have been used in these fields. 
In most cases the pine apples are grown on the 
mclayer system, the owners of the large tracts of, 
land sharing with the cultivators the crop of fruit. 
These proprietors make advances in cash or pro- 
visions to the labourers until the reaping of a crop, 
and the cultivator is precluded, under an agreement, 
from selling his share to any other than the land- 
lord. The price to be paid for the fruit varies 
from Is. to is. Gd. per dozen, according to the date 
of production ; and as the ci Livafor does not receive d 
more for a fruit weighing six pounds than he does 
for one that is only half the size quantity and not 
quality is the object of his labours. From eighteen 
months to two years must elapse between the plan- 
ting and a reaping of a crop of pine-apples, and 
in that interval the cultivator will have required 
so many advances in cash and provibions for the 
maintenance of his family that his account with 
the landlord in the shipping season is very often 
on the wrong side. The s}8tem is open to much 
objection. Apart from the unsatisfactory transactions 
in truck, the method acts as a bar to any im- 
provement in cultivation, and tends to the elimina- 
tion of any independence on the part of the labourer. 
When ripo the pine-apples are cut and carried on 
the heads of men and women to the boach nearest 
the plantation, where they are shipped in large 
American sailing vess-els. The Acting Colonial 
Secretary says it will hardly be credited that In most 
caies tho fruit is shipped in the bulk in tho ship's 
hold, and as a large schooner will carry from 75,ii(X) 
