STICKY-BANDING. 
81 
With regard to sticky-banding .—The great points are to use a grease 
or preparation which will continue sticky, but not be moist enough to 
run down, and also (and this point is of vital importance ) so to apply it 
as not to injure the bark and underlying tissues of the tree. The safest 
plan is to band on strips of common strong grease-proof paper. This 
can easily be procured at a small cost, and cut in strips of about seven 
inches wide, or of whatever width may be wished. The length may 
vary or not with the size of the tree, for there is no harm in the ends 
of the strip overlying each other. The method of application is for 
the strip to be placed round the tree, and fixed firmly either by being 
tied securely with string passed round near the upper and also the 
lower edge, or by running a band of paste beneath the overlapping end 
of the paper, and thus keeping it fixed safely down on the rest of the 
paper. On this strip the grease may be painted, or it may be smeared 
on with a smooth bit of wood like a paper knife, and thus all or much 
of the risk of grease soaking into the bark be avoided. 
How far yearly application, even of good grease, may affect tender 
bark and underlying tissues, is a point which can only be known by 
examination, and which it would be well to have further notes of. In 
a letter to myself Mr. J. Masters mentioned the difficulty of getting 
pure grease, and that, if not good, sooner or later it would be found to 
affect the trees. “ Some of the fruit stems I have felled, in cleaving 
them up, show distinctly, as compared with the other parts of the 
tree, how the grease has penetrated the inner coatings of the 
bark.”—(J.M.) I should fear that this would be the case oftener than 
is supposed, even with good grease.— Ed. 
Tar should never be applied to the bark. The late Capt. Corbett, 
Manager of the Toddington Fruit Grounds, wrote me :—“ Please note 
I have discarded tar, for I have found instances where even when 
mixed with grease it has on drying formed a tight band round the 
bark and destroyed the tree.” 
Mr. C. D. Wise also wrote from Toddington:—“Where tar has 
been used I have found the tree alive up to the place where the band 
was put on, but above the band dead.” 
Judging from a specimen of tar-grease banding now before me, I 
should say that even for use on grease-proof paper an admixture of tar 
is not safe. The mixture has been very successful in catching the 
male and female moths, but at the date of examination (Dec. 10th), 
that is, a few days after it was sent me, I find that the back of the long 
strip of “ grease-proof” paper is of a deep brown from the tar, or tar 
and grease together, having soddened through from the front. The 
extent of the mischief in a case like this would be nothing to compare 
with that of tar banding on the bark itself, because, amongst other 
reasons, the application itself is not left to form a crust on the bark, 
