In some parts of the country
it has been entirely given up to their depredations, and farmers will
not try to raise this fruit because of these active enemies. The whole
almond family are liable to the attacks of insects. Canker-worms of one
or of several species often strip them of their leaves; the
tent-caterpillars pitch their tents among the branches and carry on
their dangerous depredations; the slug-worms, the offspring of a fly
called _Selandria cerasi_, reduce the leaves to skeletons, and thus
destroy them; the cherry-weevils penetrate their bark, cover their
branches with warts and cause them to decay; and borers gnaw galleries
in their trunks and devour the inner bark and sap-wood.' So you see
that, with such an army of destroyers, we may be thankful to get any
fruit at all."
"I'm glad to know the name of that fly," said Malcolm, who considered it
an additional grievance that it should have such a long name, "but I
won't try to call him by it if I meet him anywhere."
"I think it's pretty," said Clara, beginning to repeat it, and making a
decided failure.
"Fortunately," continued their governess, after reading it again for
them, "there are other things much more important for you to remember
just now, and I could not have said it myself without the book. And now
let us see what else we can learn about the plum. It is a native, it
seems, of North America, Europe and Asia, and many of the wild species
are thorny. The cultivated plums, damsons and gages are varieties of
the _Prunus domestica_, the cultivated plum tree.
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