ACTING STATE ENTOMOLOGIST. 
57 
South Illinois, “it crawls upon the branches of the trees, during the summer, and is 
distributed broadcast through the orchard by the force of the winds, retiring under¬ 
ground and congregating about the roots on the approach of cold av eather ; (Agr. 
Rep. Mo , Append ., p. 451;) and that, as Wm. Carpenter, of Cobden, South Illinois, 
informed me, “it occurs in young trees in the nursery, two or three feet from the 
ground, but only,” as he thought, “ in damp weather.” But I myself saw three or four 
wingless specimens, subsequently taken by Mr. Carpenter off the trunk of a good-sized 
apple-tree during the long drought of the autumn of 185<, which I carefully compaied 
with similar specimens captured by myself on the roots, and found to be identical. 
Moreover, in December of the same year, Mr. W. C. Flagg, of Alton, South Illinois, 
sent me, alive and in excellent order, quite a number of specimens, gathered at that 
unseasonable period off the trunks of good-sized apple-trees, which, on the most 
careful comparison, differed in no respect from the root-feeding individuals. Mr. Flagg, 
however, informed me that “it is found more generally on the surface of the ground, 
where there has been straw or some such substance heaped around the tree.” Still, 
all such cases as these are evidently the exception, and not the rule ; and theie can be 
little doubt that the great bulk of this species live underground, and that it is on the 
roots that they are to be dreaded, and on the roots that they are to be fought. 
As long ago as 1848, Mr. Fulton, of Chester Co., Pennsylvania, found this insect and the 
knotty swellings produced by it to be so abundant on nursery-trees in his neighborhood, 
that thousands of young trees had to be thrown away, and it became difficult to sup¬ 
ply the market. (Downing’s Horticulturist III., p. 394.) M. L. Dunlap, (Rural), in a 
letter to the Chicago Tribune , (in August, 1858,) writes.nearly as follows : In the oi chard 
of Dr. Long, near Alton, the ‘ Woolly Aphis,’ infests the roots in immense numbers, 
and by sucking up the sap destroys the trees, which in its effect has much the appear¬ 
ance of dry rot. Dr. Long erroneously attributes the death of his trees to water 
standing about the roots.” Mr. Jordan, one of the St. Louis nurserymen, informs me 
that at this present day he is greatly troubled with it on his land, so that he finds it 
difficult to get enough of clean roots to graft with. According to Dr. Hull, “ it is one 
of the worst enemies against which our apple-trees have to contend, and is much more 
common in our region than is generally supposed.” (Agr. Rep. Mo. Append, p. 451.) 
In the summer of 1867 Mr. 0. B. Galusha, as one of the ad interim committee of the 
Illinois State Horticultural Society, visited Cobden, South Illinois, and collected large 
quantities of the roots infested by this Plant-louse, which he transmitted to Mr. C. V. 
Biley for examination, expressing the opinion, at the same time, that “ the destruction 
of the apple-orchards, in this vicinity, by this insect, or by the fungus that accompanies 
its operations, seems inevitable, unless a remedy is soon discovered.” (Prairie Farmer , 
June, 1867, p. 397.) When I was at Cobden myself, in November, 1867, I personally 
examined the orchard of Mr. Paul Wright, and found that small groups of apple-tiecs 
had been killed by this Plant-louse in several directions, some of them having perished 
with the half-matured fruit still hanging on their boughs. In one spot of gioundno 
less than nine trees, all in one square patch, had been killed by it; and separated 
therefrom by only a single row of living trees, there were two or three more dead tices. 
Digging down to the roots of the live trees, that intervened between these two gaps 
in the orchard, I found at once great numbers of the enemy—-hone of them, however, 
in the winged state — and also abundance of roots, clubbed, knotted and distorted, 
in almost every imaginable form, by their punctures. On examining the trees, that had 
been killed, several months previously in the summer, I found that their roots weie 
