STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
447 
HOP-APHIS. ITS DESTRUCTIVENESS• MALADIES OP THE HOP. 
Harris suggests “ to brush them from the leaves into shallow vessels con¬ 
taining a little salt and water or vinegar.” But, enveloped in slime and 
filth as they are, upon leaves which are so pliant and yielding, swaying 
aside on the slightest touch, it is quite impracticable to brush them off. 
Even when a leaf is immersed and swashed about in a basin of salt and 
water, diluted vinegar, or soap suds, I find they do not let go their hold, 
and can only be detached from the leaf by forcibly crowding and wiping 
them off against the brim of the basin. Even a feather dipped in coal oil 
and touched to them is little if at all regarded by them, further than to 
cause them to draw back and refrain from eating the leaf where it is wetted 
by this acrid fluid. 
16. Hop-aphis, Aphis Humuli, Schrank. (Ilomoptera Aphidae.*) 
On the undorsido of the leaves of the hop, suoking thoir juicos; small pale yellowish-green 
plant lice, sometimes in myriads, oovering the uppor surface of the leaves with their honey- 
dew,> which afterwards beoomes changed to a sooty black substance termed the black blight. 
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. Al¬ 
though 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 suddenly made its 
appearance in excessive numbers ; and in consequence ol its advent, the two 
past years have been the most disastrous to the extensive 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 are 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 ex¬ 
tent 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 different 
maladies with which the liop 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, analagous to the rust and smut in grain, 
and it is stated that in some hop yards sulphur has been dusted over the 
loaves to kill or cheek its growth, but without having the slighest effect upon 
it. 
Which of these maladies is the most pernicious, it would he difficult to 
