^i THE EEPOKT OF THE No. 36 



De Eougemont, borrowing some of his choicest traveller's tales from Herodotus, 

 Pliny and others, describes a one-legged race of men in Africa who go so fast that 

 (as the author justly observes) it is marvellous. As disuse leads to atrophy, much 

 use produces hypertrophy, and Mandeville declares these one-legged men have 

 developed such enormouB feet thai in the heat of the day they sit on the sand and 

 hold their foot as a parasol over the head. In my edition of the work there is 

 a woodcut illustrating this description, in which a native is seated on his one 

 haunch (how to balance oneself must be as great a problem with that race as 

 Columbus tackled in the hen's egg), shading himself from the sun with his foot 

 over his head. 



Some naturalists think that these larvae are seeking protection from the sun 

 in spreading this forked process over their back. But it seems more likely that they 

 do it to escape detection by some bird-foe for whom they would be a dainty morsel. 

 ^What makes me think so is that the pupa, too, is protected in a curious way. The 

 full-grown larva pupates attached by some silk thread to the leaf, more or less 

 exposed and helpless, but as soon as the pupa forms almost its entire surface turns 

 greyish or bluish white; it looks like a creature that has died and been attacked 

 by a fungus growth of mildew. It so deceived me that I was on the point of throw- 

 ing specimens away. It was only when I took one between finger and thumb and 

 felt it writhe firmly under my touch that I realized the deception. Doubtless one 

 more case of protective mimicry. 



Now, gentlemen, we are nearly home. We skirt the side of Corbett's Pond, 

 where in May you will sometimes find on the mud flats seven or eight species of 

 plover and sandpiper at a time, and passing along Hope Street turn up a lane near 

 the C. N. E. bridge at Ontario Street. This takes us to De Blaquiere Street, and 

 one block brings us to the plantation of young trees sent from Guelph to Trinity 

 College School a few years ago. Here we cross the cricket ground and gain the 

 school, my home for more than twelve years. We have been out all day, and 

 walked some fifteen miles, and I seem to have done a great deal of talking. I only 

 hope I have not wearied you. 



APPLIED ENTOMOLOGY FOE THE FAEMBE. 



F. M. Webster, Washington, D.C. 



Of all husbandmen, the true farmer, the grower of grains and forage crops 

 for sale or consumption on his premises, has been the last to profit by the applied 

 science of entomology. He in the past has indeed supposed himself as helpless 

 against the inroads of insects upon his crops as the Indian squaw whose only hope 

 of saving her patch of Indian corn was in the effect of charms and incantations 

 in warding off attacks of wireworms, cutworms, and perhaps other similar pests. 



The beginnings in applied entomology consisted in dusting garden vegetables 

 with soot, lime, ashes, and, somewhat later, with powdered hellebore. But to the 

 farmer these precautions meant practically nothing. Though his farm might not 

 be a large one, the area was usually loo wide to render these measures practicable 

 even if they proved effective in a small way. It is true that the trapping of cut- 

 worms under compact bunches of elder sprouts, milkweed, clover and mullen, 

 "placed in every fifth row between every sixth hill," was known as early as 1838. but 



