92 GOOSEBERRY. 



wintering in spun-together leaves still hanging on the bushes, 

 or sometimes lying amongst any shelter on the ground 

 beneath, is the special habit to be acted on to get rid of it 

 thoroughly. At pruning time the bushes should be very 

 carefully gone over, and also examined afterwards to be sure 

 that there are no leaves which may hold a caterpillar in the 

 spun-together fold left on the bushes. Also, where the bushes 

 have several stems so placed that infested leaves or insect 

 vermin might lodge, it is particularly desirable that such 

 lurking-places should be cleared out, or some trustworthy 

 insecticide poured in. Where Currant bushes are trained on 

 walls, search is especially requisite. It should also be borne 

 in mind that the longer the pruning can be deferred, the 

 more sure it is to be a good remedy. If the caterpillars have 

 either not become thoroughly torpid, or the weather is 

 sufficiently open for them to re-establish themselves, many 

 will escape by creeping away and sheltering themselves again 

 at the surface of the ground. 



Pruning and dressing under the hushes should not take place 

 until the time for the fall of the leaves is quite past. 



This precaution applies also to date of dressing away 

 possibly infested rubbish from beneath the bushes, which, as 

 well as pruning, is a very desirable preventive. All the 

 prunings and clearings from beneath the bushes should be 

 collected and burnt, in order to avoid any chance of the 

 caterpillars, which would otherwise survive in them till spring, 

 coming out and crawling back to the bushes. 



I have had notes from localities where caterpillar attack 

 was customarily bad, and as far as I could judge it was the 

 non-complete removal of the infestation consequently on the 

 early autumn pruning and dressing of the ground beneath 

 the bushes which was the reason. But if the bushes and the 

 ground beneath are properly cleared, respectively by pruning 

 and removal of hanging leaves, and by removal of surface 

 shelter below, the pests are so ahsolntehj cleared out that there 

 is nothing left to continue attack in the spring. 



Eemoval of the transparent cocoons from any places, as 

 palings, walls, crevices, or boughs, towards the end of May or 

 beginning of June, would of course be very desirable, for thus 

 we should get rid of the coming brood of moths ; but when 

 the leafage on bushes and walls is in full early summer 

 luxuriance, it is not likely the cocoons will be noticeable 

 unless the infestation is to a quite unusual amount. 



Amongst mechanical remedies, hand-picking, if the attack 

 is taken in time, and a good number of workers put on so as 

 to carry through the clearance at once where the Currant and 

 Gooseberry growing is on a large scale, has been found to 



