678 Agricultural Experiment Station, Ithaca, N. Y. 



trunks of his trees below the cotton protectors. A Michigan 

 grower does not stop to pick them off, but with an old leather 

 mitten on his right hand, he crushes those that have gathered on 

 the trunks below the bands. He also places some pieces of rough 

 boards around the base of his trees, and man}' cutworms gather 

 under them to hide during the day. He collects these every morn- 

 ing and feeds them to his poultry. These are all valuable sugges- 

 tions. 



One extensive peach grower at Forest Lawn has practically 

 exterminated the pests in his young orchard by a systematic dig- 

 ging of them out during the day. He found that a majority of 

 them buried themselves to a depth of not over an inch in the sand 

 around the trees for a distance of from one to two feet from their 

 base. Soon after the first indications of their work in the spring 

 two men and himself went from tree to tree and dug out the worms ; 

 the three men could thus go over 500 of the young trees in half a 

 day. By keeping this up for several days the depredations of the 

 pests were ended for the year, and he finds them much less trouble- 

 some the next year. In this case hand-picking was profitable, prac- 

 ticable and effective and no protective method had to be resorted 

 to. It is not an exceptional case, but can be duplicated in many 

 infested orchai'ds and vineyards : in greenhouses, also, the pests can 

 soon be exterminated by hand-picking them at night by lantern 

 light, or by digging them out of the soil around the base of the 

 plants during the day. K practiced in connection with clean culti- 

 vation, recommended above, it will prove in many cases the cheapest 

 and most lasting method of fighting climbing cutworms. 



Climbing cutworms can ai^o be poisoned. The spraying of the 

 buds in the spring with Paris green has been tried several times, 

 but wiih little success, for the cutworms are not killed quickly 

 enough to save the trees. 



In 1875 poisoned baits were used by Dr. Riley in Missouri, and 

 since then they have come into quite general use and have been 

 strongly recommended by several writers on cutworms. Until 

 recently these baits consisted of large leaves or bunches of weeds, 

 grass or clover freshly cut and dipped in a strong Paris green mix- 

 ture ( 1 pound to oO or 100 gallons of watei'). These are placed in 

 the infested fields at nightfall, and the cutworms are often attracted 

 to them in preference to their usual food. The next morningmany 

 of the cutworms will often be found dead or dying beneath the 



