state; pomological society. 47 



I know it would be up into the thousands of young trees 

 destroyed during the past summer by this one insect alone. 

 Then to take an associate, the yellow-necked caterpillar so-called, 

 and there were all kinds of others, the different species of the 

 woolly bear so-called, and many other insects that were abundant 

 this fall. 



Of the railroad worm, the trypeta, in certain sections hardly 

 an orchard has been immune from this pest. An easy remedy 

 of course would be the cleaning up of the fallen fruit. That is 

 the only thing to do — cleaning up and feeding out, or pasturing 

 sheep or hogs ; because, as most of you who are acquainted with 

 this insect know, the adult is a little fly not half as large as your 

 common house fly, and the female punctures the skin of the 

 apple and lays her egg underneath the skin. There is no way 

 you can spray to do any good. Now that little fellow when it 

 reaches maturity must go into the ground and remain over win- 

 ter. Common sense would tell you then that if you keep your 

 fruit picked up before this little fellow can go into the ground, 

 why you destroy its future career. The codling worm is easily 

 controlled by spraying. I shall be ready at any time to answer 

 any questions regarding any of our insect pests, but I don't want 

 to take the time at present to speak further on these insects that 

 are so familiar to all of you. 



We do have, though, two other insects our President referred 

 to — the brown-tail ^nd the gypsy. I think most of you are 

 familiar with the winter nests of the brown-tail. You may 

 never have seen the caterpillar to recognize it, or the adult, the 

 perfect insect. They are shown here, the whole life and work, 

 and they will be explained. But I want to say this much about 

 the work of the brown-tail moth in the State. The law of last 

 winter did not go into effect until about the first of March. We 

 could not expect to enforce the law at that late date. We tried 

 our best to institute the educational work as far as the depart- 

 ment was concerned, but as to compelling the private individual 

 or town to live up to the letter of that law, we could not do it for 

 the want of time. This year we are in hopes that we won't have 

 to do anything further in the way of compulsion. We hope and 

 trust that every man, woman and child in the State has an inter- 

 est in this matter and will see to it not only that their own trees 

 — orchards and shade trees — are freed of these nests during 



