40 
THE CULTIVATOR. 
size, beautiful in their forms, large loined, broad chested, fine in 
the head, small boned, and fine in the fleece, which averages 4 lbs. 
in the ewes; the bucks reach to 7 lbs.; in quality it is equal to half 
blood merino, but stronger in its filament, and entirely impenetra¬ 
ble to storms of snow, sleet, or rain; they are regardless of our 
coldest weather, and possess hardier constitutions than any sheep 
I know. The wethers attain to about 28 lbs. per quarter, and are 
allowed to be the best mutton sheep in England, the meat being 
dark in color, short grained, mild in flavor, and juicy. They are 
excellent nurses, and quick feeders. Here again, I beg to be un¬ 
derstood as alluding to th e pure and high bred fc'outh Down; such 
as it is found in the sheep-folds of the great sheep-masters in Sus¬ 
sex; not the common, unimproved animal of the Downs, weighing 
14 lbs. per quarter, and carrying but 2£ of wool. 
As to prices'—they are best ascertained from the sources of the 
respective breeds, and must vary much, according to the establish¬ 
ed purity of the blood, and the excellence of the individuals; the 
one a much more difficult point to ascertain than the other. 
For the last three years, preparatory to commencing my own 
flock, I paid much attention to the sheep husbandry of this district; 
visited those who owned large flocks, and soon discovered that 
they were all on the decline; I corresponded with others, and found 
the introduction of the Saxony blood was universally followed by 
a decline of constitution, and all its attendant evils; excepting in 
one instance, where a gentleman wrote me, that he had just pur¬ 
chased a flock of Saxon merinos. He assured me that in Oneida 
county, they were a hardy, healthy sheep—shearing on an average 
about 3 lbs. of wool, and the purer the Saxon blood the heavier 
was the Jleece ! ! This was so contrary to my own experience, 
having materially injured a flock of nearly two thousand grade-me¬ 
rinos by one single cross of the Saxony, that I still continued my 
plan of forming a flock from the pure, full bred , large merino sheep 
on the one part, and from the high bred sheep of Mr. Ellman’s 
flock of South Downs on the other. Assisted by the indefatigable 
perseverance, acute discrimination, and previous knowledge of a 
friend, (whose father was concerned with Col. Humphrey in his 
various importations and sales of such sheep,) I collected, after 18 
months’ search, about thirty full bred merino sheep, pure as im¬ 
ported, known to be directly descended from those importations.— 
Their quality of wool is as fine as perhaps any grade Saxony flock 
around me. The ewes will average 4 lb. fleeces. My South 
Downs I imported from the celebrated flocks of Mr. Ellman, in En¬ 
gland, whose two year old wether sheep beat all England last 
Christmas, at Smithfield, and took the first prize. He was judged 
to weigh 32 lbs. per quarter; and I am happy to say, has been pre¬ 
sented to me by Mr. Ellman, as a specimen of excellence, and will 
probably arrive in this country before long, as he was to be shipped 
from London the first week in this month, for New-York. From 
Mr. Ellman, I procured six yearling ewes, and a yearling buck; 
the ewes have wintered in a yard with an open fence, and an open 
shed, closed only at the back; they lambed there from the 23d to 
the 28th of February, on which day the thermometer was as low 
as 4 deg. On the 1st, 2d, 3d, 4th and 5th March, the thermome¬ 
ter, in the shade, was from zero to as low as 6 deg. heloiv zero, at 
sunrise! and yet my lambs, young as they were, never suffered in 
the least from the severity of the cold; they never showed the 
slightest consciousness of its intensity ! and are allowed by all who 
call to see them, to be the finest lambs they ever saw. I find rapid 
demand for all I can spare from both my flocks, at liberal prices.— 
The engagements for my South Down buck, for next season, have 
been filled for some months past; and two days since Mr. Musson, 
a Leicestershire breeder, called to see him, when I took the oppor¬ 
tunity of requesting he would weigh him—he very obligingly did 
so; and his exact weight was one hundred and fifty-nine pounds 
and a half. I have ventured on these minutiaj in regard to the high 
bred South Downs, as these sheep are very little known in the 
United States; and facts are more satisfactory than opinions: and 
again I must insist that I do not allude to the unimproved breed; I 
do not allude to the South Downs of Cully’s day, from whose writ¬ 
ings I have seen various extracts as descriptive of the breed, nor 
do I include the Hampshire Downs; I confine myself to the high 
bred sheep of the present day; and if any would oppose to them the 
fast rooted prejudice of high breeding being inseparable from deli¬ 
cacy, I would refer them to the facts above stated, and ask of them 
a personal inspection. I would further add, that it is an acknow¬ 
ledged fact, that Mr. Ellman’s flock turns out more lambs than 
ewes! averaging 750 lambs annually, for several years, from 600 
ewes. 
A strong advocate myself of purity of blood, and a known line 
of ancestry, which confers excellence by descent, still, I believe, 
for this country, the most valuable description of sheep may be 
raised by judiciously crossing the merino and south downs, thus 
uniting the fine fleece of the one with the beautiful carcase of the 
other, and gaining at once a constitution suited to our climate.— 
This was done some years since, on the introduction of the meri¬ 
nos into England, and was attended by the most flattering success, 
the flock beating every other for the combined excellence of wool 
and carcase. Both these breeds being fine, close woolled sheep, 
there is no extravagant dissimilarity, no wide contrasts to be amal¬ 
gamated, and a more uniform character is easily obtained in the 
progeny, from which it will do to breed again. This is not the 
case with a cross between the long and short woolled varieties; the 
first cross will sometimes make a good animal, but when bred from 
again, the produce is uncertain, sometimes “ taking back” on the 
long woolled parent, and sometimes on the opposite side; and when 
apparently combining in the fleece a united influence of the two 
breeds, a closer examination will shew an unevenness of length 
and filament that ill suits the manufacturer. R. 
Maple Grove, Otsego , March 26, 1835. 
DESTRUCTIVE INSECTS. 
Not only thorns and thistles, but hosts of noxious insects have 
been inflicted on degenerate man. My attention has been chiefly 
directed against the latter evil. 
The character of some of these insects will be described in treat¬ 
ing of my warfare against them. 
The first in my series, is probably of American origin, as in no 
system of entomology can I find a description of the insect which 
has proved so destructive to our peach trees. I have to rely on 
my own observation for its history and description. It was proba¬ 
bly unobserved by us prior to the present century. 
In the autumn of 1800, I first saw the fatal malady in the peach 
trees about Philadelphia ; the next year it had reached Burling¬ 
ton, and thence continued its march northward, about twelve or 
fifteen miles a year. In 1807, in a choice collection of fruit of 
my own, every tree had the premonitory symptoms of the yellows: 
a few miles north escaped that year. Having made a careful dis¬ 
section by splitting and barking several trees, I could discover 
no cause, but ravages of the worms between the bark and wood. 
Collecting a number of the worms, I confined them in glasses and 
hatched from them the perfect insect; a moth or miller, small in 
comparison with the worm; white or light grey, with dark spots, 
wings convolute, like a section of a crow-quill split longitudinally. 
This phalena or moth lays its eggs on the leaves of the peach 
tree; when hatched, the larva or maggot subsists itself first on the 
leaf, until it has acquired sufficient size and energy to migrate to 
a more suitable and permanent home for the winter: this is be¬ 
tween the bark and wood of the tree, near the ground. Here it 
enlarges its domicil ;—a sickly state of the tree follows, and if 
they congregate in sufficient numbers to circumvent the tree, cer¬ 
tain death is the consequence, by intercepting the communication 
between the root and body of the tree. 
The larva of the peach insect is herbivorous, and in this state 
of existence subsists on the tender lining of the bark; living in a 
cleanly manner, it deposites all filth outside the door, by the dark 
powdery appearance of which, its abode may be detected. In its 
chrysaloid state, its appearance is smooth and glassy. It frequent¬ 
ly happens when seeking these worms, a chrysalis very different is 
found; this is the sirex or tailed wasp, the natural enemy of the 
peach worm ; the sirex is a restless, fidgetty insect, resembling a 
wasp ; its young, like that of other wasps and hornets, is carnivor¬ 
ous. It may be observed about the neighborhood of the peach 
worm’s habitation, at the door of which it lays its egg; the pro¬ 
duct, a worm, creeps into the bowels of the peach worms, feeds 
on its carcase and occupies its coat. Its chrysalis, unlike that of 
the peach worm, is rough and filthy, caused by the sweat and 
writhing of the victim of its rapacity. 
I have been thus particular in noticing the sirex, because, be¬ 
ing a usurper of the abode of its foster parent, it has been false- 
