Winter Meeting. 285 



stricted to certain localities, because of the fact that the insects cannot 

 readily disseminate themselves. They will feed upon the apple, plum, 

 peach, cherry, pear, quince, maple, elm, locust, linden, spruce and arbor 

 vitae. 



These insects, in the nearly full-grown larval condition, will some- 

 times leave the trees or shrubs upon which they are feeding and crawl 

 leisurely over the ground in search of some other plant, but one can 

 readily see that this method of dissemination is not rapid by any means, 

 and for that reason one need not be alarmed if a serious outbreak of the 

 bag-worm should be within a half mile or so of his place, because there 

 may be no indication of these insects outside of the limited area, and it 

 would take years for them to be disseminated without some artificial 

 help, such as the transportation of cuttings or nursery stock or young 

 trees. 



When these insects do occur, they are easily held in check by spray- 

 ing with any of the arsenical poisons, preferably wath arsenate of lead, 

 which can be applied much stronger than any other arsenical poison 

 without injuring the plants, and therefore be more certain to kill the in- 

 sects, which, by the way, are somewhat difficult to kill with an arsenical 

 poison. With small trees or shrubs it is a very simple matter to go 

 through them during the winter and pick ofif these bags and burn them, 

 and in that way get rid ^f all the bag-worms, but, of course, this is not 

 practicable with large shade trees, or with large fruit trees, in which case 

 the spraying should be resorted to. 



BENEFICIAL INSECTS. 



It is a well-known fact among entomologists that our beneficial in- 

 sects do more good toward keeping our injurious insects in check than 

 all spraying and other artificial means which man has ever devised for 



Fig. 7. Praying Mantis. 



