SUMMER MEETING AT BROOKFIELD. 49 



by pointing out the diminutive object, he was not only surprised but 

 incredulous : " such a little thing as that ! " he exclaimed ; "why, I have 

 looked it up in Prof. Riley's reports, and he pictures a great deal bigger 

 bug." " Yes," I replied, "the figure is enlarged to show all the parts 

 more distictly, but you notice a little line below, about an eighth of an 

 inch long; that is the real length of the bug, and that corresponds with 

 the length of the specimen just shown you." But I imagine he still 

 doubted, thinking the notorious chinch-bug must be at least as large as 

 a squash-bug. 



The present season, owing to the abundance of last year's crops, 

 and to the unusually mild and dry winter, is likely to bring much aggra- 

 vation to the horticulturist by reason of pernicious insects, and in many 

 cases of their unseasonable appearance. Canker worm moths, for 

 instance, instead of resting quietly in the ground until the first of March, 

 at least, began emerging in December and January. I took a number 

 of males on our lighted windows on Christmas evening, and during 

 mild evenings all through January and February they were attracted to 

 the light in considerable numbers. The females meantime also came 

 up out of the ground, and crawling up the trees deposited their eggs in 

 the usual situations on the branches and twigs, and no severe weather 

 following, those eggs hatched as soon as the sap began to circulate and 

 were ready for the young leaves as soon as they unfoldeh. The cotton 

 band traps, therefore, upon which in ordinary seasons I place great 

 reliance, not having been put on until March, succeeded only partially 

 in defending the trees from the ravages of the worm. The cotton 

 bands will not usually last more than three or four weeks — long enough 

 as a rule to catch the moths ; and I did not have them applied earlier, 

 as I made the mistake of supposing that eggs laid before the first of 

 March would be destroyed by cold, or that the worms would hatch 

 prematurely and perish of starvation, neither of which expectations 

 was realized. In our own small orchard we kept them in check to a 

 great extent, by crushing them under scales of the bark, to which they 

 resort in the middle of the day. In many of the larger orchards of St. 

 Louis county, spraying with Paris green and London purple is coming 

 into practice, and often '"kills more than two birds with one stone ;" for, 

 if applied just as the yovm^ apples are formed, it will preserve a large 

 proportion of them from the codling moth, and the poisoning of the 

 foliage will kill the nearly grown canker worms and many other leaf- 

 feeding larva? at the same time. 



The great disadvantage in the use of these arsenical remedies is 

 that chickens and other domestic animals must be excluded from the 



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