310 MISSOURI STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



keep it in check is the only part of the subject that is wortli while to 

 consider in these notes. 



Dr. Goslin, of Oregon, Mo., wrote me last spring that he kept his 

 orchard free from it by spraying with Paris green or London purple in 

 liquid suspension. There is no quef^tion that this is the best means of 

 killing the worms, but the difficulty is that so few fruit growers will 

 take the trouble and incur the expense of the apparatus and powders. 

 There is likewise some danger in the handling of these poisons, and 

 unless great care is used the tender foliage may be burned. 



The most effective preventive measure is frequent and thorough 

 stirring of the soil. Where the orchard is plowed and harrowed late 

 in the autumn the pupie are disturbed and exposed and a large propor- 

 tion perish during the winter. Plowing every alternate year would 

 serve to keep an orchard measurably, if not entirely free from them. 

 If in addition to this, an application of some sticky substance, such as 

 refuse molasses, coal tar, or printers' ink, be made very early in the 

 spring, to each tree for the purpose of trapping the wingless female 

 moths, the foliage of the treos can be tolerably well preserved without 

 the use of insecticides. 



THE CODLING MOTH. 



What the canker worm is to the leaves of the apple the codling 

 moth is to the fruit, only in a still greater degree of destructiveness. 

 For this insect, also, no direct remedy has been found of greater value 

 than the Paris green solution, in the ratio of one and one-half ounces 

 of the green to five gallons of water, applied by means of a force pump, 

 hose and one of the patent spraying nozzles advertised in our horticul- 

 tural journals. This remedy should be first used when the apples have 

 attained the size of a pea and are still erect on their pedicels, and other 

 applications should be made at short intervals for several weeks. Prof. 

 Forbes, State Entomolsgist of Illinois, in an exhaustive and valuable 

 paper on the codling moth, records a series of careful experiments with 

 Paris green, London purple and lime, with a view of determining their 

 intrinsic and relative value. His conclusions on the subject are thus 

 summarized: "That paris green will save to ripening at a probable ex- 

 pense of ten cents per tree, seven-tenths of the apples which must 

 otherwise be conceded to the codling moth, that London purple will 

 apparently save about one-fifth, and that the lime will save none." 



The experiment was tried during a season when the apple crop 

 was scant, following one in which there had been an abundant yield, 

 in which the insect had bred excessively. Prof. Forbes cautions 



