1885.] THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 187 



farm and garden crops, Part ii. of the Manvxil, from page 173 to 

 244, being devoted to " Forest Trees and the Insects that injure 

 them," and we are ready to publish any additional experiences or 

 experiments of foresters regarding the insects so described.] Hand- 

 picking was not found so successful in one case, as the beetles 

 dropped from the trees on disturbance. The hand-picked insects 

 should be destroyed in boiling water. The anointing of old stumps 

 with well-known insecticides, such as Scheele's green, has been 

 followed by good results. Then Mr. M'Corquodale has tried the 

 following plan with success. "We quote Miss Ormerod's Annual 

 Report for 1879: — 



" After the Pine crop is cut and cleared, the ground is enclosed 

 thoroughly, so as to exclude stock of all kinds, and if required is 

 drained. The ground is permitted to rest the first summer for the 

 purpose of getting up all herbage as strongly as possible, and in dry 

 spring weather the whole is burned, so as to destroy the eggs and 

 food of the Beetle, and, as far as may be, stamp it out. After this 

 the ground should be planted with strong two-years' transplanted 

 plants. After each young tree is planted, a layer of earth is laid 

 round it, about two inches in thickness and eighteen inches in. 

 diameter; this layer should be beat smooth with the back of the 

 spade to prevent the Beetle lodging under any part of the rough 

 surface. This treatment was found to answer veiy weU, for as soon 

 as the Beetle in search of food comes in contact with the bare earth 

 it immediately steers its course in another direction, and leaves the 

 plant untouched. The Beetle is found to be most destructive in dry 

 warm seasons." 



JMr. Piobertson is afraid to burn the brushwood, because of the 

 danger of igniting the valuable old wood ; and is thereby precluded 

 from using what has been found to be perhaps the most effective- 

 agency for the destruction of this insect pest. Perhaps M. Gaillot's 

 automatic torch, figured and described in this number, might be 

 usefully employed in such instances as we have been considering. 



The Ox Waeble Fly. — ^Miss Ormerod asks us to direct attention 

 to the extirpation of this pest : and specially to ask recruits to the 

 cordon of farmers, tanners, and others formed for the purpose. In 

 No. 3 of the tracts entitled " Xotes on Injurious Insects," devoted 

 to this topic, which, by the way, has reached its fifteenth thousand, 

 we have the annual national loss estimated at from two million to 

 seven million pounds sterling per annum at the least. It is clearly 

 shown that this may at once cease. 



