HOP APHIS. 
53 
On Sept. 8tli I received the following note from Mr. D. Turvill, of 
West Worldham, Alton, Hants, with regard to the serious injury 
caused to Hops (when the crop was almost ready for harvesting) by a 
great appearance of Aphides :— 
“ Here we are in the first week of the ingathering of this crop, and 
to our astonishment they are turning visibly before our eyes, red and 
redder every hour. The cause is not far to seek. There has been a 
late attack of Aphis, and immediately the cones develop themselves 
the larger Aphides (wingless females ?) forsake the foliage and enter 
them, and, by sucking the short stem of each seed-wing or scale, 
reduce it to a desiccated state that under the hot sunshine of the past 
few days becomes rapidly withered and brown. Also we may be 
engendering the progeny for a severe attack next spring, if the con¬ 
ditions of hybernation should be favourable.” 
On Sept. 30th Mr. Mark Sandford, writing from the Pond, East 
Peckham, Tunbridge, Kent, mentioned the great appearance of Hop 
Aphis which had occurred in that district as follows :— 
“Our Hop-picking is virtually finished here (a few days earlier 
than usual), and now our orchards and hedges are infested with 
myriads of Hop Fly. It is generally supposed that they are the 
parents of a heavy attack of Aphis next spring ; the Damson trees 
are full of them.” .... The Damsons were also reported as being 
in some cases so covered with “lice” that they were almost worthless. 
On Sept. 29th a packet of Hops injured by Aphides and black 
mould was forwarded to me from near Hereford. 
It cannot, I think, be out of place, relatively to the fear expressed 
of early attack, to refer to the Stoke Edith experiments of 1884, in 
which it was found that in the instances of Hop-hills dressed in April 
with paraffin mixed with ashes, sawdust, or shoddy, the plants 
remained perfectly free from infection and perfectly clean up to May 
26th (when attack came on the wing), whereas those in other parts of 
the Hop-yard were infested with wingless females and lice. The 
application did no harm either to the young bines pushing up through 
it, nor to the health of the plants; they did well throughout the 
summer. 
If there is likely to be a bad attack in spring from the Hop Aphides 
that have wintered in the hills, or have hatched from eggs anywhere 
about the stocks, it certainly would save much loss if the amount of 
attack caused by lice creeping up the young bines from the hills early 
in the growth of the Hop could be prevented. The amount that arises 
afterwards towards the end of May or beginning of June from Hop Fly 
that comes on the wing cannot be prevented by the above measures, 
but it is lessened in the proportion of what in common circumstances 
would have spread from the bines which (where dressed as above) have 
