206 APPLE-TREE CATERPILLAR CRUSHING THE WORMS. 



going to the press, to an extent never before known. Persons 

 who have never seen these eggs upon their trees hitherto, now 

 notice them frequently, notwithstanding the trees are in full 

 leaf. And should the season prove favorable to them, and no 

 artificial destruction be had recourse to, our orchards bid fair to 

 be stripped of their foliage next year to an extent never before 

 paralleled. 



But, as already stated, notwithstanding the most searching 

 scrutiny, many of these clusters of eggs will escape notice, par- 

 ticularly upon the higher limbs of the trees. The proprietor of 

 an orchard, therefore, is often vexed, after entirely ridding his 

 trees of the eggs of these insects, as he supposes he has done, to 

 find nests of caterpillars appearing upon them when the leaves 

 are beginning to put forth. A second measure, the destruction 

 of the caterpillars, therefore becomes necessary. And certainly 

 the most expeditious and effectual method for accomplishing this 

 is to crush them when they are gathered together and reposing 

 in their nests. Practical orchardists are quite unanimous upon 

 this subject, although in killing the worms there is some diver- 

 sity in their practice. The best method is that stated by the 

 late Willis Gaylord : " With a suitable ladder and a pair of 

 stout mittens, if you are fastidious about using your hands, * 

 * * when the worms are all in their web, at a single grasp 

 every occupant may at once be destroyed." (Trans. N. Y. State 

 Agric. Soc, vol. iii, p. 153.) Those, however, who are at all 

 squeamish in encountering work of this kind, which it must be 

 confessed is more agreeable when done than when doing, prefer 

 tearing the nest from the tree and trampling its contents into the 

 earth beneath the sole of the boot. By thrusting a stick or pole 

 through the nest as low down in the fork of the limbs as possible, 

 and then raising it outwards, nearly the entire nest and its occu- 

 pants can be removed from the tree, when there are no small late- 

 ral limbs growing within the fork to catch and retain portions of it. 

 Others thrust into the nest a cylindrical brush constructed by 

 the manufacturers for this purpose, or the top of a dry mullen 

 stalk, attached to a pole for those nests which are high up in the 

 tree, and turning it about in such a manner as to wind the nest 

 around it, by pressing and rubbing it against the limbs, hereby 



