296 THE CANADIAN ENTOMOLOGIST. 



ENTOMOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF ONTARIO. 



The thirty-ninth annual meeting of the Society was held in London 

 on the 29th and 30th of October. A business meeting of the Council was 

 held during the first morning. In the afternoon a conference on the pea 

 weevil in Ontario took place. Dr. Fletcher gave an account of the spread 

 of this insect and the injury and loss it had caused ; the pea crop of this 

 Province he considered to be one of the most valuable products of the 

 country, and yet it was rapidly being reduced by the weevil to such 

 an extent that no less than seventy thousand acres had been withdrawn 

 from this crop during the last ten years, involving an annual loss to the 

 community of about five millions of dollars. The policy of abandoning 

 its cultivation for two or three years was advocated in some quarters, but 

 this he believed to be entirely unnecessary, as there was a cheap, easy and 

 effective remedy available. If the pea-growers would harvest and thresh 

 their crop at as early a date as possible, and then fumigate the stored peas 

 with bisulphide of carbon, there would be no difficulty in getting rid of the 

 pest. The important point is how to prevail upon the farmers to adopt 

 this method of controlling the insect. In the discussion which followed, 

 and which was participated in by Prof. Lochhead, Mr. Fisher, Dr. Bethune 

 Mr. Pearce, and Prof. James, it was suggested that the Superintendent of 

 the Farmers' Institutes of Ontario should have the matter brought before 

 all the meetings during the coming winter, that information regarding the 

 insect and the remedial measures to be employed should be disseminated as 

 widely as possible, and that the Government of Ontario should be 

 requested to send a competent staff of men to the rural sections of the 

 country, whose duty it should be to show the farmers practically how these 

 remedies can most easily and successfully be carried out. Resolutions in 

 accordance with these suggestions were unanimously adopted. 



Mr. George Fisher, the Provincial Inspector of Scale insects, gave a 

 report upon the insects of the year in the Niagara and Hamilton districts, 

 and referred especially to the San Jose scale. He gave a detailed descrip- 

 tion of the methods employed in treating fruit trees with the lime and 

 sulphur wash, which he has now proved to be a thoroughly effective 

 remedy for the scale. Dr. Fletcher stated that he had just returned from 

 visiting the scene of Mr. Fisher's operations, and could bear the highest 

 testimony to their complete success. At the close of the discussion, 

 which included the chemical composition of the wash as well as the mode 

 of preparing and applying it, a resolution was adopted congratulating the 



