THE CANADIAN ENTOMOLOGIST. 17 



ENTOMOLOGICAL NOTES FOR THE SUMMER OF 1881. 



BY PROF. E. W. CLAYPOLE, YELLOW SPRINGS, O. 



I came only last year on the premises where I am now residing, and 

 though I had a small crop of cherries, they were so badly infested with 

 the weevil ( Conotrachelus rienuphar) that only a few quarts could be 

 found free from the grub and fit for canning. This year a fair crop was 

 promised, the spring was late and the danger of frost little. 1 proposed 

 therefore to make war upon the enemy, and as soon as the blossom was 

 over prepared a large sheet of cheese-cloth, and for about three weeks 

 jarred the trees before breakfast almost every morning. As the result, I 

 have now nearly 2,000 weevils peacefully reposing in a botile, after a com- 

 posing draught of benzine. Only about 10 per cent, of my cherries this 

 year were unfit for use. I carried the war into the orchard, and simply by 

 way of experiment, jarred some of the early apple trees and captured a 

 o-reat many of my enemies. I am more than repaid for my labors both 

 on the cherry and apple trees by the quality of the apples, when last year, 

 with a larger crop, I only obtained knotty, gnarly fruit. I have this year 

 round, smooth, well-shaped apples. I have never heard that anything has 

 been done, at least in this neighborhood, to trap the weevils on the apple 

 trees. Those who live in the north have no idea of the mischief wrought 

 here by the weevil in the orchards. 



A word for the mole. In digging potatoes this year I observed the 

 runs of a mole in all directions through the ground. It was a piece f if old 

 sod and very much infested with white worms, the larvae of the Cockchafer 

 ( Lachnostetna fusca). Many of the potatoes had been partly eaten by 

 these worms, but I observed that wherever a mole-run traversed a hill of 

 potatoes no white worm could be found, even though the half-eaten 

 potatoes were proof of his former presence. The inference is fair that 

 the mole had found him first and eaten him, and very likely the mole's 

 object in so thickly tunnelling this piece of ground was to find these grubs. 

 Now^ it w'ould be very easy to trump up a charge against the mole on 

 the evidence of these facts. There was the " run " which nothing but a 

 mole could make, and there were the gnawed potatoes ; put the two 

 together and kill the mole. Many a man has been punished on less con- 

 clusive circumstantial evidence. But it is perfectly easy to distinguish the 

 work of a mole from that of a white worm, if one will only take the pains. 



