152 THE CANADIAN ENTOMOLOGIST. 



filled up with cold water, will give a sufficient quantity of the mixture to 

 sprinkle a large number of bushes. This is most conveniently done with 

 an ordinary clothes whisk. The powder may also be used dry ; when 

 mixed with four times its bulk of common flour, it should be puffed over 

 the bushes after rain, when the dew is on them, or after they have been 

 sprinkled with water. This is most conveniently done by means of the 

 small hand-bellows, now obtainable at all chemists. With regard to the 

 danger of using this material, I will quote from an excellent and very com- 

 plete article upon this subject by Prof W. Saunders, which appeared in 

 our Ent. Soc'y, of Ont. Rep. for 1871-2, p. 32. 



" It has been urged against hellebore that it is poisonous, and great 

 outcries have been made against it on this account. It is quite true that 

 hellebore is poisonous when taken internally in quantities, but if used 

 in the manner we have indicated, no fear need be entertained of the 

 slightest injury resulting from it. Examined immediately after a thorough 

 sprinkling with the hellebore mixture, the quantity on any bunch of fruit 

 will be found to be infinitesimal, and the first shower of rain would remove 

 it all. If it be found necessary at any time to apply the mixture to bushes 

 where the fruit is ripe and just ready to be picked, it might then be 

 washed in water before using, which would readily remove every trace of 

 the powder. During the past ten years many thousands of pounds of 

 hellebore have been used in Europe and America for the purpose of des- 

 troying this worm, and we know of no case on record where injury has 

 resulted from its use." 



Another insect of the same family, and with very similar habits to the 

 above, is the Larch Saw-fly, Nemattis Erichsonii, the larvae of which are 

 now spreading rapidly over the Eastern United States and Canada. I 

 have received enquiries concerning it from several of our members in 

 different provinces of the Dominion, particularly from Nova Scotia and 

 Quebec. The eggs of this species are embedded in the soft wood of the 

 young shoots of the tamarac when growth first begins in June. The 

 growth is stopped on the side where the eggs are deposited, and the twig 

 becomes distorted and is eventually destroyed. This injury, however, is 

 shght compared with the destruction of the foliage. There are. at the 

 present moment in Canada, from the Atlantic coast as far west as Ottawa, 

 thousands of acres of tamaracs entirely stripped of their leaves. In a 

 later number a fuller account of this injurious insect will be given. 



