220 BOARD -OF AGRICULTURE. 



more easily ; a little later still, especially if it is quite hot, 

 when he sees you approaching, he will fly before you get to 

 him. His weak point is not a warm day. You must take 

 him either in the cool of the morning or evening or during 

 a cloudy day. At either of these seasons it is very easy to 

 catch him. I had two boys last summer who went out each 

 morning, and went through the two outside rows in the vine- 

 yard ; and they would come back in an hour with about four 

 hundred bugs apiece. That is all they found. Some people 

 talk about finding them by the gill. I did not have them as 

 thick as that. But it does not take much longer to secure 

 a great many more ; for, the thicker they are, the more you 

 can get at a stroke. It is a very good way to have a boy go 

 on each side of a trellis, and then they will see almost every 

 one, if their eyes are sharp. I presume I caught in this way, 

 in dishes, about ten thousand last year ; and I suppose we 

 killed as many more in the course of the season, as we met 

 them. They certainly did not destroy my grape-crop, for 

 this reason, — that I did not have much of a crop for them to 

 destroy. The grapes were not there. 



Mr. Slade. Was the failure of the grape-crop this last 

 year owing to an insect? 



Dr. FiSHEPw Well, directly I can reply that it was not in 

 my case ; because, when the buds opened in the spring, the 

 clusters of flower-buds were not there, and the rose-bugs 

 could not have hurt them. There were only skeletons of 

 clusters. Sometimes there were embryo buds that did not 

 set ; sometimes there were buds that set a few grapes ; and 

 there were others that set partial clusters : but on the whole 

 premises I did not have one perfect, large cluster like those 

 of 1877. It was not the rose-bugs. The rose-bugs hurt the 

 two outside rows somewhat, but they certainly did not injure 

 my crop to any extent. A great many people who did not 

 observe carefully would go out, and, finding on their grape- 

 vines a great many rose-bugs, when they found afterwards 

 they had no grapes, assumed that the rose-bugs were the 

 cause. That is a very superficial way of reasoning. 



Question. What was the cause of your not having a 

 crop ? 



Dr. FiSHEE. That has nothing to do with insects, but I 

 will stop long enough to answer it as well as I am able. My 



