be carefully examined, and the larvae destroyed. The pests are usually found beneath the bark near the base of the tree. Scrape away the soil around the trunk; if the bark be at all loose or discolored, or if gum be observed there, search diligently for the borers. For destroying the pests on a large scale many schemes have been proposed. A wash, consisting of a weak alkaline solu Fig. 5. tion, such as soda or potash in water, or even thin milk of lime, will usually prove fatal to the larvae if applied to them in an exposed condition. Hot water has been found of service; this to be applied after the earth has been removed. Much praise has been bestowed on the method of heaping earth as a mound or bank about the trunk, to the height of a foot, then pressing the soil firmly around the tree. The currant-borers are troublesome insects, small though they be. The Imported Currant-borer is the larva of a small moth, somewhat wasp-like in general appearance. Figure 3 shows the adult moth, with the caterpillar (larva), and chrysalis (pupa). The moth is bluish black, with golden bands upon the abdomen. It may be found in June as a lively day-flier. The larva is light colored, soft and fleshy, not unlike a maggot. Its ravages are wrought in the stems of cur Fig. 6. rant and gooseberry shrubs, the woody parts being at times tunneled through great distances. The feeble appearance of the tree and the poor quality of fruit will give evidence of the presence of the borers even though the hollow stems do not break off. The American Currant-borer belongs to a different order of insects, though resembling the foregoing in general habits. This creature is the larva of a small beetle, shown in figure 4, natural size and enlarged. This beetle flies by day, and may be easily caught by reason of its low state of activity. The beetle is of a long and narrow shape, and of a brownish color. White markings appear on each wing case. The maggot is white and footless, with dark head and jaws. As a remedy it is well to cut off and burn all affected stems; this treatment is most seasonable in spring or autumn. Apple tree borers are numerous and some of them are very destructive. The "flat head apple worm" is shown in figure 5, which represents the larva, the pupa, and the mature insect, all sketches being slightly enlarged. The insect be Fig. 7. longs to the order of buprestian beetles. The full grown larva is a light colored grub, without feet, and chiefly distinguished by its swollen and flattened head. The round-headed apple tree borer is also a beetle; the larva, pupa, and mature insect are sketched in figure 6. The imago is a fine insect, nearly three-quarters of an inch long; light brown, with long cream-colored stripes extending the whole length of the body; the legs are gray. The larva is light-colored, with brown lustrous head of characteristic roundness. The presence of the borers, both round and flat-headed, is usually indicated by a discoloration of the bark; the affected parts should be scraped and the larvae killed. Alkaline washes are good remedies; soft soap solution, or even ordinary soapsuds may be employed with profit. Let the treatment be HOW SOME PRINT. a day or two. Many of the larvae may be killed in the fall of the year, when they are preparing their quarters for the winter nap. 291 repeated several times at intervals of tent caterpillar may be found on the twigs and small branches of many of our fruit trees, apple, pear, plum, cherry, and quince included. The eggs are deposited in encircling bunches like collars, about half an inch in length, and are protected by a gummy secretion rendering them practically waterproof. All the twigs thus adorned should be cut off and burned. Empty egg collars, the shells of preceding broods, may be easily distinguished from the filled shells. Figure 8 shows a twig encircled by eggs, also the caterpillar and the moth of this insect. A wide range of insects known as barklice, most of them very injurious to plants, may be killed by thoroughly washing the trunk and spraying the branches with a mixture of thin white-wash and kerosene oil; a good preparation is in the propor Fig. 8. tion of one gallon of milk of lime and one pint of kerosene. Treatment with this should be repeated several times. Now, too, the pupae or chrysalides of the coddling moth may be found in great numbers beneath the bark of apple trees. In a very short time these will develop into the moths proper, small glistening creatures; very beautiful, indeed, as subjects of microscopical study, but detestable in the eyes of the fruit raiser. Figure 7 is a representation of this creature, showing the larva, the naked pupa, the cocoon, and the adult moth or imago. While the apple fruit is very young, before it has well passed the blossom stage in fact, the moths deposit therein their eggs, from which the grubs are soon developed; these then eat their way into the core of the fruit. The chrysalides should be sought in their hiding places and killed without mercy; then the trees should be treated with a wash of lye, soap, or limewater. The eggs of destructive insects should be sought at this season Those of the It should be remembered that injurious insects attack, by preference, plants of weak nature and poor culture. Judicious pruning, and proper fertilizing of the soil about the tree, will do much to secure immunity from these pests. In the springtime the farmer will encounter many insects which are really friends to him in his labor, and he will do well to make their acquaintance, and to extend to them his fullest protection. Nearly all the ground beetles, the carabidæ family, prey on insects injurious to crops. Most of these beetles are of a dark color, exhibiting burnished or metallic hues. Their larvae are generally called maggots. They are usually found on the ground, though occasionally they ascend trees in search of caterpillars there to be found. The pretty lady-bird beetles afford to our fruit trees and flower shrubs great protection, by destroying the hosts of plant lice, which make their presence so disastrously apparent. Man has warm friends and destructive foes among the insects; he should learn to know both; then should he treat each class according to its deserts. James E. Talmage. HOW SOME PRINT. Professor Max Muller, the great Oxonian professor of philology, says that "humor is a safer sign of strong con. victions and perfect safety than guarded solemnity." Likewise did I ever prefer the gaily smiling philosopher of Abdera (Demokritus) to the stern and austere Heraklitus. To correct bad manners 4 with wit and satire is far more pleasant for the executioner as well as for the condemned; and, likewise, the correction of incorrect habits of speech is far more easily achieved by bantering badinage than by pedantic pedagoguery. This holds good, of course, both of oral and written speech, with the latter of which I intend to occupy the reader's time for a short breathing spell. Written speech, in this age of paper, is becoming a mighty, nearly almighty factor of interchange of ideas, almost supplanting its twin brother of the oral branch. But it is as yet in its infancy, and few manipulate it with that accuracy and "hair-breadthness" that distinguished the diction of the classics of the Tatler and Spectator in the past Euphues days of Addison and Steele. Especially the daily or weekly newspaper of the "wild woolly West" is too often the vehicle of a "wild and woolly" style that would shock even less sensitive linguistic nerves than those of a purist of profession. But "time is money," and in the feverish haste of "getting there," the hack writer on the exacting press, with the unsilenceable clamor of the foreman for "copy!" at "make-up" time, has to let his pencil drive and drivel away, Canadian snow-shod or slip-shod. Hence the sand -on-the-sea-shore abundance of lapsus calami ("calamitous lapses") in the country newspaper and the city newspaper with "country" brain. It has for years been to me an almost daily source of a little malicious delight to encounter, even without deliberate search or "malice aforethought," those crooked little "devil's imps" in the columns of "exchanges," and my rival editor's "bulls" indemnified me many a time for the "bears" of my "typo" or proofreader (though the latter might even have been my dear own self). Of late, in the more or less imaginary leisure hours of a rural (but not yet rusticated) pedagogue, I've taken my pencil and note-book and jotted down a few of those little frailties, those peccadilloes of style that my eyes could discover or my ear would be offended by. I give a brief anthology, the result of half an hour's "pick" at ran dom with no propensity at fault-finding, only with a sort of innate and ineradicable appreciation of the ludicrous-the same as Peck's (or Hæfeli's) bad boy would enjoy when he saw his paternal ancestor of the immediately preceding generation slip on the ice. I do not specify the papers whence I glean, as no evil motive or captious personality inspires me. What I am doing is simply for the sake of a little fun for others as well as for myself. Thus, one little comma, by its contumacious absence, played the very deuce with politics. A paragraph in a daily Utah paper (all my present gleanings are harvested on Territorial acres) says: "It was a splendid thing for the Republican party that it has been decided not again to call up the Lodge Bill and a big victory for the Democrats.” With no comma after "bill," the unselfish Republicans are subjected to the possibility of so generous an intention as calling up triumph for their "friends, the enemy." In the same journal I learn that "Tom Reed rules too supreme in the lower house, to expect the free coinage measure will pass." Tom Reed, I take it, was never likely to expect any such contingency; it is the people who might, did he not "rule too supreme." And once more, pointing out that “it costs the county when its officers chase escaped convicts," and advising the employment of "a steady jailor" (an unsteady one wouldn't do, of course) the self-same paper hopes that such employment would "give the sheriff'' better opportunity to go "where duty calls." As if "escaped convicts" did not at all times and places escape and need chasing, the latter being the emergency "where duty calls" the sheriff and not the "steady jailor." Another (a "metropolitan") journal makes the sagacious discovery that "sometimes political feeling runs high and acrimony is sharp and bitter." So is granulated sugar sweet and soft, but not suffi ciently so as to smooth the sharp edge of sharpness or sweeten the bitter in bitter ness. HOW SOME PRINT. It is a case, as in the same paper's editorial columns, "like Buridam's (means Buridan's) ass, starved to death between clover and hay," two species of fodder which admit of preference and choice to any donkey, whereas the English writer's simile implies an ass midway between two bundles of hay of exactly alike quality, precluding all difference and hence offering no inducement for preference. I meet a good journalistic friend of mine in an off-mood and bad company, when he remarks that "the smelting of ores require a certain amount of iron, carbonate of lime and salt," and then proceeds to say that "these necessities exist in abundance, and all are in the immediate vicinity of-" (never mind where!) Indeed "these necessities exist," not only "in abundance" but in complete totality wherever smelting is to be prosecuted; but the wherewiths to supply the materials which form a necessity, are only found in such favored haunts of nature 293 there, however, and had things fixed," forgetting in his zeal to "fix" the editorial syntax. Of a contemporary journal, in the fraternal spirit of reciprocal titillation, our old friend asserts that "it covers all the southern territory." Bless the imagination! Mustn't the newsboys down there be the veritable spawn of Homer's "hundred-handed" Briareus? A New York dispatch in a city paper tells the shocking tale how "the headless and mutilated body of a man was found floating," etc. Well, if any one were to cut off my caput, little as it may be worth, my friends would think I had been mutilated to a considerable sufficiency. By the way, I forgot the best part of the midnight catastrophe in "the factory race." Another column, in the same issue referred to above, tells us of the same incident, that "the water, while running, had frozen into a solid mass, and began flowing over the river headgate. Down onto the factory went the stream," and so on till, "if it had not been for the early action of the watchman and others, it might have proved very damaging." I should say so. Running water frozen into a mass of solid ice and a flowing stream going onto the factory! Lucky thing, that the factory is alive yet; or did it burn up? In the account of a woman's suffrage meeting, the same paper informs us that one of the lady speakers "believed suffrage was right, and we should all take hold of a thing we haven't got." The dear ladies may do that by the time their brethren of the sterner sex have learned to lift themselves by their own boot straps. Many instances have been recorded of According to the same vehicle of current information a fellow-citizen heard "from his sheep last night." As "he has five thousand head in two herds," the chorus of those twice two thousand five hundred ovine orifices must have been of a stupendous acoustic fullness. How would they do to be "heard from" at the Columbian exposition? No wonder that "the manner in which "typographical errors." I mean compeople are subscribing to the flattering." They must be doing the subscription act in knickerbockers, powdered wigs, and lace cuffs. is Their "manner" must be altogether different in its mildness from the wildness exhibited in the immediately following paragraph where "the mush ice in the factory race banked it up by the railroad track, causing the water to overflow the lands." The watermaster "was soon mon "misprints." Some of them are exceedingly ludicrous, because they are what the Germans call "sense-perverting." Thus one of my most welcome journalistic visitors, speaking of Sullivan's new opera, reported of it that it was a "suburb performance." The latter having occurred in one of London's most exceptional temples of art, the description must indeed appear "superb" to the managers. Speaking of J. E. Boyd, the Governorelect of Nebraska, one paper gives the assurance that "there is no danger of the Presidential bee ever buzzing in his bonnet, for he is ineligible, having been born in County Tyrone, Ireland, and is fifty-six years of age." Well, what of the latter biographical fact? That would make him neither too old nor too young, would it? But that is "none of our funeral." Neither shall I, when I am dead, want such obsequies as those announced in the paper just quoted from, according to which "the funeral over the remains of the little son-will take place from the residence," etc. Poor innocent! What did he perpetrate in his short life to require "the funeral" to "take place over" his guiltless remains? Are we about to witness a reestablishment of the monster car of Juggernaut among the Hindoos? Dire prospect, avaunt! * * things But not all are so hideous as the following: "Disease was once considered a creature of frightful unicre, but the revelations of modern mien show the germ of most diseases to be very insignificant in size and appearance." Was it a "frightful unicorn" or a "mien," to be set right by the revelations of modern "science?" I hope the latter. No wonder the diabolical sprite in the same office made a most venerable and respected, as well as gifted, preacher say that "if the Lord has dealt with all the ancient governments on account of their sacrilegion," etc. No wonder, neither, that so many public speakers of ability dread the idea of being "reported" in the slip-shod daily press, without "due process of law" and possibilities of revision of both the manuscript and the proof. Revision of the latter was evidently needed in the following passage: "There are dire calamities coming over this great nation in the near future, for they are failing to repent of their sins.” Who? the calamities? I hope, the "comp." and the proof-reader of the journal in question will, in sackcloth and ashes at that. A paper, more or less familiar with the woolen business, informs us that certain "woolen mills are now turning out perhaps the finest class of woolen goods * the fact being that the wool could not be sufficiently cleansed so as to entirely remove the grease." Poor wool! Was the wool after and although But I am afraid that from trying to be (or because) "not sufficiently cleansed," entertainingly humorous, I am getting expected to go out and "entirely remove morosely critical and didactic. I only the grease?" Wherefrom? from the wanted to cause the youthful reader sheep? Or did the fact that the wool especially to pause and stop at everything "could not be sufficiently cleaned," "en- he reads or writes, hears or says, whentirely remove the grease?" Here's a ever there seems to be "a hitch." Sift stunner for the chemist or the grammarian, and simmer down the cause of the perpossibly for both. Or it might be "a plexity and you will in ninety-nine out plucky incident,” such as the runaway of one hundred cases find it to be the narrative in the same issue. result of a lack of thought-begotten acLeo Hæfeli. A "pied stick" has done many ugly curacy. THE ROYAL ARSENAL AT WOOLWICH. THE fame of Great Britain as a fighting nation, both on land and sea, has been a theme of song and story for generations. In the present century Waterloo and Trafalgar are pointed to as examples of her prowess, and if there is any one thing of which the typical Britisher is especially proud, it is the record of national achieve ments in battle which the history of his country presents. Intimate to him that any other nation, ancient or modern, approaches his in warlike proclivities or abilities, and he regards it as an affront; suggest that there have been occasions when the cross of St. George has been torn from its haughty peak, and he pre |