xamination you can tell whether
borers have deposited eggs or not. I do not say it will rid the tree of
borers if they have been allowed to deposit eggs and are left for years.
It makes the tree grow more vigorous. I do not know what is in this tree
wash, but it did no damage.

B. F. Smith: Chandler has tried this wash, and it has proven successful
with him. There are always new things being tried. If he has found
something good for trees, we should not object to it. If I receive a
package I will try it.

T. A. Stanley: My experience with borers will date back as far as fifty
years ago, when I was a boy, and the best thing to exterminate them with
was a jack-knife. A Boston gentleman visiting my father went into the
orchard and asked father if he had ever seen any borers. Father told him
he knew nothing about them (they were something new in those days).
Examining a tree, he took out his jack-knife and went to work near the
ground, and he soon showed why the tree was not doing well. With his
knife he dug the borer out and said the jack-knife was the best
exterminator he knew of. My experience is, if you will attend to it
about the 1st of June, when the beetles come out on the tree and deposit
their eggs behind loose scales of bark, and wash the tree with strong
lime wash, it will kill them. I prefer lime wash to any "nostrum" ever
introduced. When they once get into the tree no wash will take them out.
Horticulturists have been deceived enough by patent nostrums.

E. J. Holman: By instinct this insect never lays its eggs on the
surface. It lays as completely in the wood as the locust, which
punctures almost to the heart of a twig. A borer lives three years in
the wood; the third year it comes out in perfect form. It goes below in
the wood every winter, and the third spring passes the cocoon stage
there. They lay about fifty eggs, each placed separate and apart in the
wood. Rarely does an egg fail to hatch.

J. W. Robison: These beetles are very fierce. Put a half dozen into a
bottle and they will beat a bull fight, and will not stop until they
kill each other. She is a philosopher; she makes punctures sideways, so
the eggs can be laid in a row, and the bark close over them. It is only
a few days until they hatch; open the lip where deposited and you can
see them plainly. Without cutting the bark, thrust your knife under the
lip and you can hear the eggs crack. The larva works round and round
until of the size of a p