Volume 72: Macarthur family correspondence relating to wine, 1846-1900: No. 528

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[Page 528]

resistant Stock

Dear Madame
To combat successfully with the Phylloxera, we must not follow the examples of other Countries, where submersion planting in pure sand and the use of insecticides the chief of which is Bi [Di] Sulphide of Carbon, have proved failures in connection with the extermination of the insect.
As in france so at the Cape Colony and recently in our own Colony in the vineyard of Mr Gill at Liverpool where after injecting forty pounds worth of Bi Sulphide the insect was all over the Vinyard six months after --  Our salvation will be the resistant stock to plant and reconstitute our vineyards and we may here take advantage of the bitter disappointment of other Countries particularly the Cape Colony where hundreds of thousands Riparia seedlings were raised with scarce 10 per cent fit for grafting and even then not sure of being Phylloxera proof.

In France the speculation in resisting stock flourished until some years after it was found that although raised from American seed they were not all Phylloxera resisting.
At the Congress at Montpellier held on the 13th of June 1893 Mons. Millardet, the principal pioneer of of the American Vines -- said we see that many American Vines which were held to be resisting are more or less devastated by the Phylloxera and are the cause of much want of success and defeat which followed so many year of confidence

 [in margin]
Mrs Onslow
Camden Park
6/3/96

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