48 MISSOURI STATE HORTICTJLTUKAL SOCIETY. 



REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE ON ENTOMOLOGY. 



MISS MARY E. MURTFELDT, KIRKWOOD, MO. 



To the entomologist, it would seem as though every one must by 

 this time know all about the common insect pests of the orchard and 

 garden, so much has within the last twenty years been published and 

 preached concerning them. But, as a matter of fact, comparatively 

 few, even among horticulturists and gardeners, are thoroughly acquainted 

 with even the canker worm, codling moth and plum curculio in their 

 various stages of development. The names of these insects are familiar 

 enough, and they are perhaps known in the form under which they com- 

 mit their depredations. But even of this stage not very careful observa- 

 tions are taken. It would no doubt puzzle a good many fruit men to 

 tell which of two larvse, the apple worm and the peach worm, if shown 

 to them outside the fruit, was the larva of the codling moth and which 

 the larva of curculio. Four-fifths of the letters that I receive, making* 

 entomological inquiries, refer to these same insects or their work. 



A friend of ours, a gentleman of thorough education, who has for 

 many years been a florist and fruit-grower, inquired of me this spring 

 what I expected to catch in the cotton wool band which we had bound 

 around our apple trees, and what purpose they could serve in keeping 

 the worms off the trees ; and when I explained to him briefly the history 

 and structure of the canker worm-moth, how the perfect insects all came 

 out of the ground very early in the spring, how the males had ample 

 wings, but that the females were providentially destitute of these ap- 

 pendages and could only get into the trees to lay their eggs by crawl- 

 ing up the trunks, and that any sort of trap surrounding the latter 

 would necessarily catch them — he professed to have obtained for the first 

 time an idea of the philosophy of the plan. (The gentleman had not 

 attended the meetings of our State, or perhaps of any other State horti- 

 cultural society.) We can never get familiar with nature's secrets or 

 with the objects of natural history by simply reading about them. We 

 should study the objects themselves. In reference to publications on 

 the subject, I must confess that the highly magnified figures which 

 illustrate so many reports on entomology are of no practical value in 

 enabling the farmer or fruit-grower to identify his insect enemies or 

 friends. The principal value of these pictures is scientific. A gentle- 

 man, much interested in wheat, not as a producer, but as a dealer, de- 

 sired me once upon a time to show him a specimen of the chinch-bug 

 "that farmers make so much complaint about," and when I complied 



