596 STATE BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



worm about half an inch long. It works on the leaves of the pear and 

 cherry, scraping off the soft part in patches, but leaving the veins. 

 Sometimes when very numerous, as they were during the past summer 

 in the western part of the State, they do a great deal of damage. 



REMEDIES. 



The sticky, viscous nature of these worms gives us an excellent means 

 of fighting them. Any dry powder which is caustic and which will not 

 injure foliage, such as air-slaked or dry-slaked lime, will stick to the 

 skin and eventually kill them. Hellebore is perhaps the best remedy of 

 this nature; it should be diluted three times with flour, but, unfortunately, 

 Hellebore is expensive and for this reason it is often better, if the 

 orchards are large ones, to spray with Paris-green, using one pound of 

 the poison to 150 or 200 gallons of water, always adding lime. (See 

 chapter on insecticides.) 



Sometimes the worms come on after cherries are pretty well grown, 

 and in this case Paris-green or any arsenical poison should not be used, 

 because of its poisonous properties, but a spray of kerosene-emulsion 

 (Hubbard's formula), diluting ten times with soft water. Whale-oil 

 soap is recommended as being very effective, using twelve pounds of the 

 soap to fifty gallons of water. 



THE WHITE-PINE SAW-PLY. 



(Lophyrua lecontei Pitch.) 



About July 13 the white pines on the campus were seen to have 

 colonies of small, naked caterpillars scattered through their branches. 

 None of the colonies were large and the injury to the trees was very 

 slight. Nothing more was noticed until near the middle of September, 

 when these little false-caterpillars again appeared. This time, how- 

 ever, their work was not limited to the defoliation of a few branches, but 

 the work of destruction continued until the middle of October, and occa- 

 sional specimens were to be seen even in November. The trees were 

 sprayed where this could be done easily, but the damage was very con- 

 siderable in spite of everything. Large trees lost a third of their foliage, 

 and it seems no exaggeration to say that the worms could be measured 

 by the bushel. 



These little false-caterpillars (Fig. 26) are the larva? of saw-flies. They 



Fig 26. White-pine Saw-fly (Lophyrus lecontei); larva. 



are yellowish or greenish-white in color, and when full-grown measure 

 three-quarters of an inch in length. They are provided with twenty-two 

 legs. The head is jet black, as are also four rows of spots which run the 

 entire length of I he body. Two rows of elongated spots run down the back, 

 while on each side is a row of broader squarish spots. There is a great 



