APPLE-TREE CATERPILLAR CRUSHING THE WORMS. 207- 



crush most of the worms, and complete the work by returning 

 to the nest on a subsequent day and repeating this operation. 

 Whichever of these methods is adopted, the work is in all cases 

 the most easily performed and the least disgusting, when the 

 worms are young and small. It should therefore be done early 

 in May, as soon as the white nests, appearing like cobwebs in the 

 forks of the limbs, become sufficiently conspicuous to be readily 

 seen. The worms of some nests will be out, feeding, at the same 

 hours when others are resting within their tents. They are 

 more universally in their webs in the morning than at any other 

 time. But days during which there is a slight sprinkling rain 

 are probably the best for this work, as the worms are then all 

 in their nests, as a general rule, and are more torpid and less apt 

 to crawl away; though the nests when wet are not so easily dis- 

 covered. Often, too, when from the number of worms reposing 

 in the nest we imagine the whole of the brood is there, a portion 

 of them are in reality absent, engaged in feeding. Thus it fre- 

 quently happens that w r hen we suppose we have entirely exter- 

 minated a nest, on returning to it a few days afterwards we are 

 surprised to find it rebuilt and quite a number of worms inhab- 

 iting it. In order therefore to entirely destroy these pests, it is 

 necessary to go through the orchard repeatedly. And every 

 owner of an orchard should make it a point to wage a war of 

 extermination against these insects, annually. Not the fragment 

 of a nest which is accessible should be allowed to remain. The 

 rich green foliage in which the trees will be clad when released 

 from this most common enemy, and the quantity and fairness of 

 the fruit which they are then enabled to grow, will amply repay 

 the care which is thus bestowed upon them. Within the circuit 

 of my own observation I presume one-half the owners of 

 orchards give no attention whatever to the caterpillars which 

 yearly invade their trees. Most of them are men of such strict 

 economy they think they cannot afford to spend their time in 

 such trifling work as destroying these worms' nests. Now it re- 

 quires but a few moments, with a suitable ladder, to mount into 

 a tree and with one hand covered with a buckskin mitten, crush 

 every worm in the nest there. Ten of these nests can thus be 

 destroyed with ease in an hour. Each of these nests contains 



