238 
THE CULTIVATOR. 
August. 
ENTOMOLOGY—NO. 16. 
Experiments—Soap on Apple Trees—Powdered Char¬ 
coal on Cucumber Plants. 
Editors Country Gentleman —The worm on cur¬ 
rant and gooseberry bushes which “ Enquirer,” of Hi- 
on, N. Y., so accurately describes, is the larva of the 
American currant moth, ( Abraxas? Riberia ,) a full 
description and figure of which, in its different stages, 
will be found in the Transactions of the New-York State 
Agricultural Society for 1847, page 461, and some ad¬ 
ditional particulars are given in the volume for 1856, p. 
427. I have nothing to add to what is contained in 
these accounts. I have known quite a variety of rem¬ 
edies tried for expelling these worms from the bushes, 
but none of them were of the slightest service. The in¬ 
sect is quite analogous to the European gooseberry moth, 
{Abraxas Grossulaviata ,) and in England the experi¬ 
ence of ages has shown that, though tedious, the only 
sure and effectual process by which the bushes can be 
rid of these worms, is to shake and pinch them off by 
hand, and crush them beneath the feet. 
I know not what the larger reddish worm is, which 
“Enquirer” speaks of as living together in clusters, 
and wholly stripping the branch they inhabit. The Red¬ 
humped prominent, mentioned in Trans. State Ag. Soc. 
for 1856, page 342, corresponds with the little that is 
stated of this worm; but I have never known this to 
attack currant bushes, or to appear so early as this in 
the season. 
I have wanted very much to draw up an article for 
the Country Gentleman upon the Apple tree borer ( Sa - 
perda bivittata ,) but "other engagements are so pressing 
upon me, that I shall be unable to do so for a few weeks 
to come. I therefore avail myself of this opportunity 
to say to your readers, briefly and in haste, but most 
earnestly, 
Nota Tiene ! 
If you have any young apple trees , and have not 
yet rubbed their bark with soap this season , do so im¬ 
mediately , without fail! 
In my article in the Country Gentleman, January, 
1857, (vol ix. p. 78,) the statement of Mr. J. M. Clark 
of Baraboo, Wisconsin, was published—that he had 
taken thirty large sized Buprestis worms from a choice 
apple tree, which had been regularly washed with soap, 
sulphur and tobacco water, in May or June, for three 
years preceding. This statement excited doubts in my 
mind whether soap was, after all, so effectual in pro¬ 
tecting trees from borers, in the bark and wood, as all 
previous testimony had induced me to believe, and I 
resolved to say nothing more respecting the efficacy of 
this substance, until I could test it, and thus be able to 
speak from my own observation and knowledge. I ac¬ 
cordingly entered upon an experiment, last year, with 
this view. I have thirty young apple trees between 
three and four inches in diameter, planted in six rows. 
The borer had the year before invaded most of these 
trees, and was still lurking undiscovered in several of 
them as I since find. On the 20th of June I rubbed the 
bark of the four outer rows of these trees, profusely, 
with common soft soap, and omitted applying it to the 
two middle rows. I have just completed a careful in¬ 
spection of these trees. The unsoaped ones are eight 
in number. In four of these no young grubs were 
found ; two of them having been so nearly girdled by 
mice two or three winters ago, that there was scarcely 
sufficient hark remaining to furnish an abode for a 
borer. Of the four remaining trees, three had two 
young grubs in each \ the fourth was last summer the 
thriftiest tree in the whole orchard, but this spring, to 
my surprise, only two of its limbs put forth any leaves, 
and on coming to examine the butt, small borers from 
less than a quarter to nearly a half inch in length were 
detected and cut out of the bark, to the number of 
fifteen ! I also have four other young trees, standing 
apart from those above spoken of, and as a farther ex¬ 
periment, I wrapped and tied tough, thick brown pa¬ 
per around the butt of these, without applying soap to 
them. 
This spring the lower edge of the paper where it 
was in contact with the ground, was found rotted away 
so as to slightly expose the bark at the surface of the 
ground, and in one of these trees three small borers 
were found. Thus in twelve trees wbieh were not 
soaped, twenty-four borers had been deposited during 
the past year. And of the twenty-two trees to which 
soap was applied, a most careful scrutiny has failed to 
detect a single young borer in any one of them. The 
experiment therefore demonstrated as conclusively as 
any single experiment can do, that this substance is a 
perfect safeguard against the borer, the most insidious 
and deadly enemy with which we have to contend in 
our orchards. Borne of the trees still show the white 
salt-like tinge of the soap applied to them a year ago, 
which satisfies me that a single application will suffice 
to protect the tree for the whole year. Moreover, the 
clean, smooth, bright appearanco of the bark of the 
soaped trees is in marked contrast with the rough, scaly, 
moss-covered bark of the unsoaped ones, showing that 
the health and vigor which this substance imparts to ,, 
the tree, demands and will abundantly repay for its 
application where no insect depredators are present in 
the vicinity to be repelled by it. 
A single experiment, however, can seldom be relied 
upon as fully establishing any point of this kind. An 
instance forcibly illustrating this is now fresh in my 
view. An article is now going the rounds of the pa¬ 
pers, copied from one of our most respectable agricul¬ 
tural periodicals, in which the editor, ex cathedra , as¬ 
sures his readers that pulverized charcoal dusted over 
cucumber plants will effectually repel the striped yel¬ 
low beetle from them. On this subject he is positive, 
from actual trial. About a week since, I discovered 
that my cucumber, squash and citron plants were 
overrun, eaten, and in a fair way to be soon destroyed 
by this very insect. I immediately dusted three of the 
hills profusely with charcoal, turning up the leaves of 
one hill, and coating their wounded and bleeding under 
sides with the powder. Three other hills I dusted with 
pulverized soot, and three others I enclosed in boxes 
open at the bottom and top, whilst others still were left 
wholly unguarded. On visiting the plants next day, 
these beetles were found upon them as numerous as 
before, and distributed equally upon the dusted and 
undusted hills, some of them black with the coal dust, 
like a hog that had been wallowing in the mire. With 
my fingers I now crushed every insect that was not so 
nimble as to escape. And by following up this prac¬ 
tice daily since, they have left the vines, so that only j 
a few stragglers are now to be found, and these con- | 
tinue to occur 
I have now 
having found 
is often on the dusted hills as elsewhere, 
repared boxes for nearly all the hills, 
beetle inside of these boxes in only a 
f 
rv: 
