STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
595 
would guarantee that not one of these borers would ever touch them. Some 
of the present audience will probably recollect how forcibly one of the most 
valued members of our State Society, the Hon. A. B. Dickinson, recom¬ 
mended this same remedy, at one of our annual meetings a few years since. 
Having had a favorable opportunity, I have since then tested this remedy to 
some extent, applying it to a part of my trees, and omitting it from others ; 
and the following spring I have found young borers in almost every tree where 
the soap had not been applied—one tree only '6\ inches in diameter having 
fifteen in it—whilst not one could be detected in any of the soaped trees. 
In the same box is also a male and a female fly of the peach tree borer— 
the two sexes being very unlike each other, as you will perceive. Like 
the apple tree borer, this fly places its eggs on the bark low down, at or 
near the surface of the ground, and the worms from them work downward 
in the bark of the root, causing the gum to exude profusely. In numerous 
instances poach trees are supposed to be winter-killed, when it is this borer 
in the roots that has destroyed them. This same insect works in the root 
of the plum tree also, when it cannot find all the peach trees it requires 
for its accommodation. When the worm gets its growth, it crawls up to 
the surface of the ground, and there surrounds itself with a kind of pod, 
formed of its chips and castings mingled with gum. A specimen of one of 
these pods you will see in the box. This pod is placed on the side of the 
root in a groove of the bark, with its upper end projecting slightly above 
the surface of the ground ; and when the pupa lying in this pod is ready 
to give out the winged fly, it crowds itself upward out of the pod, its 
outer shell cracks open, and the fly crawls out of it. 
The apple and the peach borers in their larva state, i. e. the large white 
grubs which are found under the bark of the apple and in the root of the 
peach tree, are so much alike in their size and appearance, that many per¬ 
sons believe them to be one and the same insect. But you will here see 
that they are the progeny of insects which have no resemblance whatever 
to each other. 
Finally , in this box is the moth or miller of the apple tree caterpillar— 
the insect which comes abroad in July, and places the rings of eggs near 
the ends of the twigs of the apple and cherry trees, from which, the follow¬ 
ing spring, the caterpillars hatch, which form the large cobweb-like nests 
in the forks of the limbs of these trees. I exhibit these, chiefly, because 
these caterpillars are so common, and yet so very few persons have ever 
seen the moth by which they are producod. Also in this box you will see 
the cocoon which the caterpillars spin after they disperse themselves and 
wander away from the tree, out of which cocoon the moth afterwards 
comes. 
In this box I have also placed two specimens of the curculio —a beetle, 
however, with tho looks of which all the owners of plum trees are already 
familiar ; as they also are with the little crescent-shaped slit which it cuts 
in the side of the young plum, dropping an egg into the wound, the worm 
from which feeds internally upon the fruit, rendering it worthless. And 
