80 
AMERICAN BLIGHT. 
stand in a tank of cold water for half an hour, when all 
the hlights will leave it and swim on the surface of the 
water. For hops, none of these plans are available ; and, 
unless a way could be discovered of increasing the number 
of the blight-eaters, I fear the chance of discovering a re- 
medy is very small. 
I don't know why our brethren on the other side the 
Atlantic are charged with sending us the greatest pest of 
our orchards, but so it is. We call an insect the Ameri- 
can Blight, which, for aught I could ever make out, may 
have come from China or Botany Bay. However, a name 
once in vogue will have its day ; and one might as well 
attempt to turn a pig in an entry as argue against an esta- 
blished belief ; so American blight it shall be. In very 
hot weather you may now and then see this blight on the 
wing ; it has just the look of a bit of cotton, or a dow^ny 
seed, floating in the air, and is driven by every breath of 
wind quite as readily. If you catch and examine it, you 
will find it to be just like the plant-louse which infests our 
rose-trees, &c. ; but, unlike all other plant-lice, it is cloth- 
ed and muffled up with cotton-wool, in such quantities, 
that you would at first have no more idea that the lump 
contained an insect, than that the mass of clothes on a 
stage-coach box in winter, contained a man. Some folks 
wonder what can be the use of so much clothing ; I am 
not much of a theorist, but I should guess that the vermin 
came from the torrid zone, and Nature kindly furnishes 
this garment to protect them from the cold of our climate. 
These blights wander wherever the wind pleases to 
carry them ; and if bad luck should drive one of them 
against the branch of an apple-tree, there it will stick, 
creep into a crack in the bark, bring forth its young, and 
