STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
jHf 
in 
ADDRESS 
DELIVERED BEFORE THE ANNUAL MEETING OF THE STATE 
AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY, ALBANY, FEBRUARY 8tii, 1865. 
BY ASA FITCH, M. D., ENTOMOLOGIST OF THE SOCIETY. 
The insect which the past season attracted the most notice and did the 
most damage in our State, was the Aphis or Plant-louse upon the hops. 
Although the hop has been growing, both wild and cultivated, in this 
country, from time immemorial, I am not aware that this enemy has ever 
attacked or been observed upon it, until two summers ago, when it sud¬ 
denly made its appearance in excessive numbers; and in consequence of 
its advent, the two past years have been the most disastrous to the exten¬ 
sive hop growers in the central section of our State, which they have ever 
experienced. In some yards the hops have not been picked, and in other 
yards a portion of those that have been gathered, it is said, ought never to 
have been dried and put up for market, they arc so small and worthless; 
whilst the best that have been grown are of an inferior quality, the bitter 
principle, on which their value depends, being deficient, according to the 
published reports, to the extent of from 15 to 25 per cent. 
The newspapers and agricultural periodicals have abounded with notices 
of this failure of the hop crop. From the extended accounts which some 
of these publications have given, it would appear that there are three dif¬ 
ferent maladies with which the hop vines have recently become affected, 
namely, the Aphis or plant-lice, the honey dew, and the black blight. The 
plant-lice are soft pale yellowish-green insects, not so large as the head of 
a pin, which remain stationary upon the under sides of the leaves, crowded 
together and wholly covering the surface. The honey dew appears on the 
upper surface of the leaves, as a shining, clear and transparent fluid, sticky, 
like honey smeared over the surface. The black blight also occurs on the 
upper sides of the leaves and resembles coal dust sifted upon and adhering 
firmly to them, or the leaves look as though they had been held in the 
smoke of a chimney until they had become blackened over with soot. 
This black blight is deemed to be a kind of fungus growing from the leaves, 
analogous to the rust and smut in grain, and it is stated that in some hop 
yards sulphur has been dusted over the leaves to kill or check its growth, 
but without having the slightest effect upon it. 
Which of these maladies is the most pernicious, it would be difficult to 
judge from the published accounts, one writer seeming to regard the Aphis 
as the principal evil, whilst another wholly ignores this insect and dwells 
upon the black blight as being the cause of the failure of the crop. And 
it is not a little amusing to observe how very wise the reporters to some 
of the newspapers appear in giving an account of these diseases, and what 
a display of scientific lore they make, when their statements betray to us 
