446 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



writers upon the culture of fruit trees to destroy the Lackeys, 

 were to wait until their nests were of a sufficient size, and then 

 fire a charge of gunpowder into them, or apply a match of burn- 

 ing brimstone on the end of a pole. These appliances to the 

 vermin were certainly sufficiently sanguinary, and discovered a 

 good degree of earnestness in the attack ; but at the present day 

 we would not recommend its practice. Neither would we apply 

 spirits of turpentine, fish oil, soapsuds, or lime water, to their 

 nests, as is the practice of some persons. The best and most 

 effective method of destroying the Lackey caterpillar, is the one 

 recommended by the late Col. Timothy Pickering, in a letter to 

 the Massachusetts Agricultural Society, under date of May 26, 

 1817, — written when that distinguished gentleman and agricul- 

 turist was residing in Wenham, in this county. He says : " I 

 always considered it disgraceful to a farmer to suffer his trees 

 to be stripped of their leaves and their fruit, for that season at 

 least, to be destroyed, seeing it was very practicable to get rid 

 of them, when small, with the fingers. This was my father's 

 mode when I was a boy. The same long ladders, which served 

 in autumn in gathering his winter fruit by hand, enabled one to 

 come at most of the caterpillars' nests in spring. On this effec- 

 tual example I have myself practiced since I became a farmer. 

 Some over-delicate persons might object to this mode ; but it is 

 really far less offensive than the bare sight of large and numer- 

 ous nests, with which apple trees are sometimes filled. And if 

 this operation be performed early, when the caterpillars are 

 only from a quarter to half an inch long, the operator, (man or 

 boy,) will feel no repugnance. Last Saturday morning, the 

 idea of a proper kind of brush occurred to me, that would be 

 effectual in destroying the caterpillars, and in the forenoon I 

 tried it with complete success. The efficient and convenient 

 instrument for this work, is nothing more than a common bottle 

 brush, fastened on the end of a pole. Having an old one in 

 my house, I was enabled to make the experiment on the day 

 when the idea of so applying it occurred to me. In using the 

 brush, I press it on the small nest, and turning the pole in my 

 hand, the web is entangled in the bristles and removed ; other- 

 wise, you rub the fork of the limb, inside and outside, with the 

 brush, when nest and worms are surely killed or brought down." 

 The Pickering brush can now be obtained at all our agricultural 



