88 JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC ENTOMOLOGY [Vol. 5 



was full of them, and tliej- made a very perceptible humming sound 

 like a swarm of bees. At the University of Idaho, about seven miles 

 from the forest, it was abundant, and on one occasion I collected 40 

 specimens by picking them off the walls of the administration building 

 while going once round it — and this seven miles from where any of 

 them matured. 



The next spring the extermination of menapia seemed complete 

 all over the northwest. In ten years afterward I think I saw only 

 one specimen alive. Only in the last two or three years is it "coming 

 back," and we seem to be at the beginning of another cycle of abun- 

 dance. 



I secured no other parasite of menapia, and fulvescens was present 

 in millions, from which it would appear that the previous fluctuations 

 of menapia may have been caused in the same way as the one described. 



On account of the burning of my notes in a university fire, I am 

 obliged to trust to memory, and it is possible that the year of exter- 

 mination may have been 1899. 



The parasite died out at once, and was not seen again for several 

 years. It may have other hosts here, but no other caterpillar is 

 abnormally abundant in our forests, so the numbers of the parasite of 

 necessity fell at once almost to zero, on the disappearance of the prin- 

 cipal host. I have never seen another case so striking of the effect of 

 parasitism on both host and parasite. I have made no observations 

 on fulvescens as a secondary parasite. 



SOME ECONOMIC METHODS A HUNDRED YEARS OLD 



By Harry B. Weiss, New Brunswick, N. J. 



In going over some old works on entomology, I was impressed by the 

 similarity of some of the methods in use a hundred years ago and those 

 of today. By this, I do not mean to imply that we have not gone 

 forward in that length of time, but, rather that in many cases, we are 

 still following the basic principles of the old methods. 



When our grandfathers were troubled by wire worms, it was cus- 

 tomary to bury beneath the soil, slices of potatoes stuck on skewers. 

 These were pulled up every day and the larvae thereon killed. These 

 baits of course were stuck alongside of the infested plants. For 

 fields overrun with injurious larvae, it was recommended that the 

 infested land be ploughed up and a flock of ducks or other poultry or 

 a drove of pigs turned in, and drenching a field with stable urine was 

 supposed to kill all grubs in addition to acting as a fertilizer. With' 



