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AGRICULTURE OF MAINE. 



REPORT MAINE PARASITE LABORATORY. 



The parasite work for the summer of 191 5 is now finished 

 and I beg leave to submit my report of the work accomphshed 

 under my direction at the Maine Parasite Laboratory. 



In some ways the season was far from satisfactory, but, on 

 the whole, I am not entirely disappointed in the amount of work 

 that we have been able to accomplish, though of course I should 

 have been very much pleased had the season been more to our 

 advantage. 



My first care after arriving in Portland in May was to get 

 the notes of the two preceding years copied upon the new sized 

 note slips. This took about two weeks, as they were in such a 

 chaos that considerable study was necessary in order to get 

 them arranged correctly. 



As soon as the foliage on the wild cherries was sufficiently 

 advanced in growth, I removed part of the brown-tail webs 

 from cold storage where they had been since collection, and 

 started forty trays of one hundred webs each. A week later the 

 remainder of the webs were removed from storage and placed 

 in trays. From the starting of the webs until the first of July 

 the entire time was taken with caring for the trays and colon- 

 izing the parasites obtained. The number of Apanteles ob- 

 tained was not quite as many as I had hoped for, but, consid- 

 ering the short time this species has been in Maine and the 

 setback it suffered, owing to the severe winter of 1913-1914, 

 the results were very satisfactory. 



Following is a detailed report of the number of Apanteles 

 and Meteorus cocoons obtained from the webs : 

 Kennebunk 1700 webs gave 1025 Apanteles and 234 Meteorus 



691 



89 



511 



932 " 

 400 



36 " 



107 1 6 Apanteles '2893 Meteorus 



