May 27, 1886. ] 
JOURNAL OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 
419 
obviously kill or remove various insects, and also leave fewer 
lurking places for others, as in this case. Contrivances have 
been resorted to which might prevent the caterpillars that have 
left fruit reaching any refuge, and then crawling about they are 
likely to be picked otf the ground by some insect-eater. Not 
many fruit-growers, however, seem to think it needful to take 
such precautions, though perhaps they err in not so doing. Thus, 
a tarred band round a trunk would stop their approach to it, or 
a circlet of sand damped with paraffin prove too odorous for 
them; and such a simple application as a layer of softsoap, 
over which scarcely a caterpillar, large or small, will crawl if it 
can be avoided, will be useful, only this is washed away by heavy 
rain. Prom standards or young trees any fruit that shows the 
presence of this insect should be picked otf at once. 
The extensive and abundant family of the sawflies contains 
species that rank with the worst enemies of the garden and 
orchard, some by their ravages committed on leaves and fruits, 
others by their attacks upon the growing wood of saplings or 
trees. Prom the curious resemblance that many of the larvae or 
grubs have to those of the moth tribe, they have been called 
pseudo-caterpillars, but when feeding externally they have a 
method of swinging their bodies in the air, which is not practised 
by the larvae of Lepidoptera, also in their number of legs they 
exceed those. Much as the Apple suffers from the a'tacks of 
true caterpillars, it escapes lightly from most of those of sawlly 
parentage, even more than does the Pear. It is the custom in 
some orchards or fruit plantations, for instance, to have an 
undergrowth of Gooseberries and Currants amongst the trees, 
and there sometimes the leaves will be stripped, especially those 
of the former, by the bluish green and black grubs of Nem itus 
ribesii. However hard pushed they may be for food, they will 
sooner, I believe, die on their native bush than ascend an Apple 
tree, or indeed a Plum or Pear. But the Pear, like the Plum 
and the Cherry, is victimised by the insidious slimy grubs of 
Selandria cerasi or pyri (it appears that we have several species 
nearly allied and scarcely isolited as yet), these not merely 
devouring the whole upper surface of many leaves, but injuring 
the tree by the pernicious character of the substance they exude. 
Since slugworms, as these sawlly grubs are aptly called, are also 
found on Hawthorn and Sallow, I see no reason why they should 
not infest the Apple, but so far they have not been reported, nor 
have I observed them. 
The chief foe to the Apple of the sawfly tribe, but one not 
excessively abundant as a rule, is Tenthredo testudinea. Prof. 
Westwood seems to have been the earliest to chronicle its occur¬ 
rence. “ At the end of June, 1838,” wrote he, “ I observed that 
nearly the whole crop of young Apples in the garden of my 
residence at Hammersmith had fallen to the ground, being then 
about the size o? small Walnuts, and on opening some of them 
I found the interior devoured by the larva of a nematus having 
twenty feet, and a body thickly wrinkled. When alarmed, they 
emitted an odour like that of the C. lectularius or bed bug.” 
This last circumstance is peculiar, because an offensive smell 
amongst insects is generally given as a means of defence, and 
larva, feeding as these do, can be in no danger of being devoured 
by larger insects or birds. It suggests that the species has pos¬ 
sibly changed its mode of life. The fly is particularly timid 
and difficult to capture as it wings its course among the Apple 
blossoms during May Above, the body and legs are shining 
blaek, the under surface being orange, the wings are transparent 
and tinged with brown. From the flower the tiny grub parses 
into the immature fruit, as described by Westwood, but it does 
not prolong its stay there, as does the caterpillar of the moth 
mentioned above. At the end of June or early in July, the fruit 
being about one-fourth the proper size, it his succeeded in 
stopping farther growth, and the Apple attacked is therefore 
dropped by the tree As the grub is then full-fed it quits its 
abode and enters the eirth, not far beneath which it makes a 
cocoon, abiding there tiil the following year. Evidently those 
measures taken for the destruction of insects generally in the 
Burface soil around fruit trees during the winter season will kill 
most of the cocoons of this tty. The six-footed semi-gregarious 
grubs of the sawlly genus Lyda, have been stated, on rather 
doubtful evidence, to feed sometimes on Apple. 
Almost fifty years ago an entomologist, not a gardener, 
detected the caterpillar of a moth mining in the shoots of the 
current year, and generally causing them to wither up. This 
species also frequents the Pear, but then prefers the solid wood. 
From its fly-like aspect, coupled with a red band round the body, 
the moth is called the red belted clearwing, and in science Sesia 
myopaeforme, rather absurdly, for this insect is by no means a 
sho: t-sighted creature, which is evidenced by its selection of a 
place for the caterpillars. These are small, very muscular, and 
with legs ; their whole life being passed in the pith or wood as 
the case may be, and they turn to pupae in the spring, the moth 
emerging about midsummer.—E ntomologist. 
BUSHING INTO PRINT. 
“ Observer’s ” remark to the above effect, in reference to “ W. P. R.,” 
page 398, brings a gooi story to my mini that has the merit of being 
true, and as there appear to be many anonymous allusions flying about 
over the premium question there is no harm in relating it; but I leave 
that to your editorial discretion. The story relates to one the initials of 
whose name are “ W. P. Runder which signature he has at times 
written to the horticultural papers, although I do not wish to convey that 
your “ W. P. R.” and mine are one and the same person. They may be 
totally different persons for anything I know, and probably are ; but be 
that as it may, the “ W. P. R.” I speak of was, a good many years ago, 
foreman at a place I know particularly well, and on one occasion while 
there he sent a graphic account to one of the gardening papers of an ex¬ 
traordinary crop of a certain useful and acceptable esculent produced 
under his charge, signing his name or initials, I forget which now, and 
giving the name of the place. This be did without the knowledge of his 
mister the head gardener, who did not see the paper in question. Unfor¬ 
tunately, the crop of-that year up to that time had been a failure so 
far as a supply to the kitchen was concerned, and it so happened that 
some acquaintance of the. employer (who is a nobleman) drew the 
latter’s attention to the paragraph about the remarkable crop of - in 
his garden as reported. Judge, therefore, of the head gardener’s confu¬ 
sion when one day soon after his employer came into the garden, and 
drawing the paper containing the repirt from his pocket, observed good- 
mturedly, “ D., I would like to have some of these fine - myself!” 
The reply of the gardener was, “ And you should have had, my lord, if 
the story had been true ; but I never heard of it till this moment.” It 
was the foreman’s turn next, and one of the principals in the matter who 
told me said, “ he believed he had a bad quarter of an hour.” He did 
not “rush into print” anymore while there; but he did after he left 
some time, and his gross exaggerations had to be reportei to the editor of 
the paper by the then head gardener of the place. They related to a 
crop of another kind at the same place—and of course grown when he 
was there—but which had no existence in reality. —Head Gardener. 
ORANGE CULTURE IN FLORIDA. 
( Continued, from paqe 379.) 
The Age of the Orange Tree.— The great age to which the 
Orange tree lives and bears is an important consideration for the colonist, 
who might, by a little self-denial, an 1 through a judicious first selection 
and expenditure upon an Orange grove, virtually endow his posterity 
with an annually increasing income. Risso, in discussing this matter, 
mentions that, in the convent of St. Sabina, at Rome, there is an Orange 
tree said to be 600 years old, and at Nice, 1789, there was another whice 
usually bore between 5000 and 6000 Oranges ; its trunk took two men th 
encircle it, its crown was more than 50 feet from the ground, and its ago 
was lost in antiquity. Even in England. Orange-rearing, during a con¬ 
siderable part of the year in the open air, has not been attended with 
much difficulty, as witness the B-iddington orchard in Surrey, of which 
Bishop Gibson, in his contributions to Cimden’s “Britannia,” says it 
“ was 100 years old in 1695,” the Hampton C »urt Orange trees, some of 
which are stated to be more than 300 years old ; and various gardens in 
South Devonshire, where, trained against the walls, and only protected 
with straw mats during winter, are specimens which have flourished for 
at least a century. 
Large Orange Trees. —The following are a few oE the large 
Orange trees in Florida :—The Fort Harley tree, in Alachua County, sup¬ 
posed to be seventy-two years old, which has home 18,000 Oranges iu one 
season ; another in St. John’s County yields 15,000; another in Bradford 
County over 10,000; and a Lemon tree, at Fort Reid, thirty-two years 
old, has borne over 20,000 Lemons. These are only a few of the large 
Orange and Lemon trees in Florida. 
Marketing the Orange Crop.— Nothing but the superior quality 
of the Florida Orange has saved it from extinction in the market. It is 
sad to ponder the losses that have been the. result of such gross mis¬ 
management. Many a poor young man, after five or ten years of unre¬ 
mitting toil, had brought his thrifty trees into bearing, and confidingly 
consigned them, duly packed and labelled, to the far-off unknown com- 
mission man in New York, Philadelphia, or Chicago. After weeks and 
months of weary waiting would come a deque of such a small amount 
that the grower, eagerly looking over the accompanying letter for the 
reason, would read : “ Your fruit came to hand on the 22nd in bad con¬ 
dition, being two weeks on the road ; much was badly frozen, and quickly 
decayed, &c.” Or instead of cheque, perhaps came a letter similar to the 
above, enclosing a bill for transportation for the fruit that was ruined by 
the company’s neHeet. Other fine Oranges, well packed, arrived in good 
order, and straightway fell into the hands of a ‘ bogus ” or “curbstone 
merchant, who pocketed the receipts in toto. letting the far-ofi unsophisti¬ 
cated grower whistle for his money. Representatives of the latter class 
annually make winter trips to Florida, spend their ill-gotten gains ln 
high living at the grand hotels, scatter glittering stencil plates and glow¬ 
ing circulars among the Orange growers soliciting their custom, and 
depart, like trappers, to await the result after setting their snares^ As 
the fruit began to colour on fhe trees, the owner would a-k his neighbour 
who he was going to ship his fruit to. The answer would be, “ I reckon 
