813 
No. 145.] 
Long Island and in the adjacent districts, so that this tree does 
not now flourish as formerly. And similar to this is the concur¬ 
rent testimony of nurserymen and writers in our agricultural 
periodicals. Whilst upon new laud at the west and southw r est, 
without any of the care and attention which we here bestow, this 
tree grows with all its pristine vigor and luxuriance. 
Two maladies, more particularly seem to attack and destroy 
this tree, preventing it from attaining that age and size which it 
formerly acquired. These are, the “yellows,” which seems to be 
a kind of decline or consumption peculiar to this tree, and the 
borer or grub at the root, the insect which w T e are now to consider. 
This last is confessedly the worst enemy which the peach tree has 
to encounter in our country. During the past year, 1854, I 
noticed it everywhere, from the banks of the Hudson to those of 
the Mississippi. At the west, however, it is much less common, 
and by no means so destructive as with us. My own residence is 
near the northernmost limit where the peach can be cultivated, 
the severity of the winters commonly destroying the trees whilst 
they are young and tender; and as I here had never captured the 
moth which produces these borers, I have hitherto supposed 
this was beyond the limit to which this insect reaches. But of a 
dozen peach trees in my yard, now about ten years old, I the present 
spring And all except one are destroyed, the roots being sur¬ 
rounded and enveloped in a mass of jelly-like gum from one to 
three inches in thickness at the surface of the ground, and the 
bark entirely eroded and wuth worms of all sizes burrowing in it. 
And throughout this district of country the peach trees are almost 
all found to be dead the present spring. It is universally sup¬ 
posed and confidently affirmed that it has been the winter w'hich 
has destroyed them. But in several instances where I have 
informed persons of the condition of my own trees, they find, ou 
coming to examine theirs, that the roots are surrounded in the 
same manner with a bed of exuded gum, in which a number of 
worms are nestled. It is thus evident that it is the borer and not 
the winter that has occasioned this wide-spread calamity, and 
that the evil which we have suffered might have been averted by 
