REPORT OF THE ENTOMOLOGIST AND BOTANIST. 



(James Fletcher, F.R.S.C, F.L.S.) 



Wm. Saunders, Esq., 



Director Dominion Experimental Farms, 

 Ottawa. 



* 



Sir, — I have the honour to hand you herewith a report upon Bome of the work 

 catried on in my department during the past year. Owing to want of assistance 

 and facilities for work, many things which might have been attended to have been 

 held over for the present. I have treated at some length certain of the more import- 

 ant subjects which have been brought ofi&cially under my notice. 



DIVISION OF ENTOMOLOar. 



There has not been, during the past season, any attack upon crops of special 

 severity. Fruit pests have probably demanded more attention than any other class, 

 owing to the exceptional abundance of such apple-tree pests as a new species of case- 

 bearing caterpillars, the Eye-spotted Bud-moth, the Oblique-banded Leaf-roller, and 

 in certain districts of the Autumn Canker-worm. A new attack of some interest by 

 the last-named insect was upon the ash-leaved maples used as shade trees in the city 

 of Winnipeg. This, however, could of course be easily prevented by a timely spray- 

 ing with a weak mixture of Paris Green. The Vancouver Island Oak-looper, which 

 has now for some years stripped the oak trees around the city of Victoria, was 

 during the past autumn much reduced in numbers by the attacks of a fungous 

 disease which has been kindly identified by Professor Roland Thaxter as Sporo- 

 trichum globuliferum, Spegazzini, a fungus which has done good service in reducing 

 the Chinch bug in Illinois and other States, It also attacks many other insects, and 

 has been used by Professor Forbes in his late experiments upon Chinch bugs, Cecropia 

 moths, the Grain Aphis and other plant-lice and some saw-fly larvpe. (III. Rep. 

 XVII, p. 82.) Bark of oak trees sent from Victoria early in 1891, by Mr, W. H, Danby, 

 who has given me much assistance in working out the life history of this pest, con- 

 tained thousands of good eggs of the moth from which these caterpillars were hatched. 

 A similar packet of bark received this winter contained a great number of dead 

 caterpillars and chrysalids, all attacked by the fungus, and so few eggs that I could 

 not find one. Later in the winter, however, seven specimens of caterpillars were 

 secured. There must, therefore, have been some cause for the great diminution 

 in the number of eggs laid, which cause I judge to be thisfungus. Field crops all over 

 the Dominion have as usual sufFei-ed to a certain extent from the various kinds 

 of Cut-worms. Agrotis ochreogaster (==A. turris), a large and voracious caterpillar, when 

 full grown 1^ inches in length and of the usual dull colours, but bearing on its back 

 a broad reddish stripe, has been very injurious in many places, extending fiom Ottawa 

 as far west as Calgary, In the Ottawa district Noctua fennica, the " Black Army- 

 worm," was again this year very abundant and destructive, particularly to clover, 

 pease and asparagus. Spreading from a clover field on the Experimental Farm they 

 over-ran, about the third week in May, nearly three acres of a pea field, which they 

 swept almost bare. This attack was stopped promptly by spraying a strip 50 feet 

 wide, ahead of the cater2)illars, with Paris green, 1 lb. in 100 gallons of water, by means 

 of Knapsack sprayers. 



The Grain Plant-louse (Siphonophora avence), occurred in small numbers as usual. 

 Sensational accounts in ihe newnpape.s proved upon enquiry all to be gross exag- 

 gerations. The Tomato Stalk-borer (Gortyna cataphracta) was slightly more abundant 



