CRANBERRIES — INSECT PESTS. 167 



The winter flowing is desirable to protect the vines against the 

 severe winter frosts ; don't think it has any effect on the insect tribe 

 or their eggs. Warm water hatches them out, and water drowns 

 them, 3'oung and old. 



Yours truly, 



L. H. Small. 



A short paragraph from another letter may be of interest : — 



Har-\vich, Aug. 4, 1882. 

 Friend Babbitt : — Yours of the 2d at hand. In the bog that was 

 under water last summer about all the month of August, I did not 

 succeed in killing the worms entirely. The reason, I think, was that 

 it was flowed too late. I proposed to the agent to flow it about the 

 10th of Jul}-, when the destructive swarm first began to work, but he 

 did not do it until about the first of August when the insects were in 

 the miller state, who used their wings and left their eggs on the bor- 

 der of the bog. I tried it on a small bog, when the miller was out, 

 with the same result, but another bog which I flowed on the 5th of 

 Jul}', when the worms first came, and kept under water about forty 

 days, was a perfect success and seemed to destroy not only the vine 

 worm but the fruit worm and all other insects, and I had the best and 

 largest crop the bog ever produced. 



Yours truly, 



L. H. Small. 



In " Cranberry Culture," Joseph J. White, March, 1870, in 

 speaking of the " fruit worm," says : 



" This larva bears a striking resemblance to the ordinarj- apple 

 worm, and, like that, is lazj- and sluggish in its habils. We have 

 reason to believe that the perfect insect lays its eggs under the ten- 

 der skin of the newlv formed berry. The egg is hatched by heat 

 and the young grub eats its way into the heart of the fruit, causing 

 certain destruction. It has been asserted b}' some cultivators that 

 one worm will destroy one berr}' only ; but this is a mistake ; the 

 same worm will frequently' destro}' at least two. This is fully 

 established by the fact that two berries may be found with a hole 

 passing directly from one to the other at the fioint where the}' come 

 in contact, — one being red and the other fi esh and green v/ith a 

 nearh' full-grown worm in it ; as further evidence we may state that 

 worms have been discovered on the passage from one berrj' to 

 another. 



"This premature coloring of the berry — the effect of the fruit 

 worm — has been observed in New Jersey as earl}- as the 10th of 



