THE HOP-VINE BORER

Extract

The casual reader, calling to mind only the half dozen hop-vines usually seen about the kitchen garden, or trailing upon some farm outbuilding, can hardly realize the possible losses to hop growers by insects. According to the last census (for 1879) New York State alone had over 39,000 acres in hop yards, producing nearly 22 millions of pounds of hops, which, at an average of 28c. per 1b., would aggregate a value of over six million dollars. Bearing these figures in mind, with an annual loss of 10 per cent. from only one insect—the hop borer—(and 25 to 50 per cent. of injury has been reported) a loss of $600,000 would result in this single State.

With such a destructive agent in the hop field, is it not a little singular that there is little or nothing “in the books” on the subject, and that the pest is in all probability an unknown and undescribed species? I am not able to give its name—Prof. Comstock writes me he is working it up—but as I have accumulated a mass of interesting data on the subject in my census work, I deem it proper to make known now the experience of intelligent growers in different sections of the country, for the benefit of those who have not yet learned how to fight the pest, leaving the scientific name and details of habits and natural history to be supplied hereafter.