216 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



course quite to the ground, you can scarcely ever succeed in 

 capturing or discovering him. In that case, the proper way 

 is, when you come upon him, to put your left hand under 

 him first, and then put your right finger upon him. If he 

 drops, you have got him in your hand. If the female has 

 succeeded in lajdng her eggs before you capture her, you 

 will soon find the larvae upon the leaves. They should be 

 killed with the thumb and finger. I recollect one instance 

 in which the larvae, by estimate, destroyed half the crop of a 

 large vineyard, because the owner did not know any thing 

 about the insect, and did not know how to destroy it. But 

 every insect, as was stated last evening, has its weak point. 

 This is his weak point ; and it is easy enough to sit down 

 upon him just at that time. 



One of the next insects you will find is the tent-caterpillar 

 of the apple-tree. Very fortunately we have not seen much 

 of it lately : in my region we have seen scarcely any. 

 There have been only a very few, but enough, I suppose, for 

 seed. I have no doubt that within a few years we shall see 

 plenty of them. There is just a right time to kill them ; and 

 that is very early in the spring, just after they are hatched, 

 before the leaves are much developed. On a sunny morning 

 you will see the shining tent they have made, and they are 

 pretty much all in it ; and the best and most effectual remedy 

 is the thumb and finger. No matter how filthy it appears, 

 after you have killed one nest j^ou cannot be any dirtier; and 

 there is nothing that will compare with the thumb and fin- 

 ger for killing them. If you wait three or four days, it will 

 take vastly more labor to get rid of them ; and it is all non- 

 sense to try to brush them off after the}^ get big, or to take 

 a sponge wet with kerosene or something else and set fire to 

 the nest, because they are mostly not at home when you 

 call. You cannot find any time in the day, when they are 

 partially grown, that they are all at home ; but, when they 

 are quite young, you can kill every one of them by a simple 

 motion of the thumb and finger. 



The next insects that we come to in the course of the sea- 

 son are the borers, — the apple-tree borers especially ; but 

 the peach and quince tree borers really come under the same 

 head, because their treatment is the same. It is necessary 

 to know something as to the habits of these insects in order 



