INJURIOUS INSECTS. 
63 
I 
liie orchardist. These are chiefly the borer, the caterpillar, and 
the canker worm. 
The apple * Borer is, as we usually see it in the trunks of the 
apple, quince, and thorn trees, a fleshy white grub, which enters 
the tree at the collar, just at the surface of the ground, where 
the bark is tender, and either girdles the tree or perforates it 
through every part of the stem, finally causing its death. This 
grub is the larva of a brown and white striped beetle, half an inch 
long, ( Saperda bivittata ,) and it remains in this grub state two 
or three years, coming out of the tree in a butterfly form early in 
June — flying in the night only, from tree to tree after its food, 
and finally depositing its eggs during this and the next month, 
in the collar of the tree. 
The most effectual mode of destroying the borer, is that of 
killing it by thrusting a flexible wire as far as possible into its 
hole. Dr. Harris recommends placing a bit of camphor in the 
mouth of the aperture and plugging the hole with soft wood. 
But it is always better to prevent the attack of the borer, by 
placing about the trunk, early in the spring, a small mound of 
ashes or lime ; and where orchards have already become greatly 
infested with this insect, the beetles may be destroyed by thou- 
sands, in June, by building small bonfires of shavings in various 
parts of the orchard. The attacks of the borer on nursery trees 
may, in a great measure, be prevented by washing the stems in 
May, quite down to the ground with a solution of two pounds 
of potash in eight quarts of water. 
The Caterpillar is a great pestilence in the apple orchard. 
The species which is most troublesome to our fruit trees ( Clisio - 
campa americana ,) is bred by a sort of lackey moth, different 
from that most troublesome in Europe, but its habits as a 
caterpillar are quite as annoying to the orchardist. The moth 
of our common caterpillar is a reddish brown insect, whose ex- 
panded wings measure about an inch and a half. These moths 
appear in great abundance in midsummer, flying only at night, 
and often buzzing about the candles in our houses. In laying 
their eggs, they choose principally the apple or cherry, and they 
deposit thousands of small eggs about the forks and extremities 
of the young branches. The next season, about the middle of 
May, these eggs begin to hatch, and the young caterpillars in 
myriads, come forth weaving their nests or tents in the fork of 
round each tree one peck of charcoal dust, and propose in the spring to 
cover it from the compost heap. 
“My soil is a strong, deep, sandy loam on a gravelly subsoil. I cultivate 
my orchard grounds, as if there were no trees on them, and raise grain of 
every kind except rye, which grain is so very injurious that I believe three 
successive crops of it would destroy any orchard younger than twenty 
years. I raised last year in an orchard containing 20 acres, trees 18 years 
old, a crop of Indian corn which averaged 140 bushels of ears to tin* 
acre.” 
