INSECTS ATTACKING LARGE FRUITS. 77 



to lay her eggs may be accomplished by encircling the tree with 

 a narrow band of some sticky substance, as refuse sorghum mo- 

 lasses, printer's ink, pine tar, etc. The sticky substance should 

 be spread on a canvas or paper band tied tightly around the tree 

 trunk. The application should be made in the first mild days oi 

 spring, and the band kept sticky by frequent renewals until the 

 leaves are started on the tree. 



If the Canker-worms are once thoroughly exterminated in an 

 orchard, they may not reappear for a long time. Owing to the 

 wingless condition of the females, the pest spreads slowly ; but 

 for this very reason a local attack largely increases in strength 

 with each succeeding year, the females of each succeeding gener- 

 ation being confined to a limited range. 



Kansas Notes. — Mr. G. C. Brackett, in the Transactions Kan- 

 sas State Horticultural Society for 1873, says (p. 114): 



. . . There is not any reason, judging from the past, to believe 

 that they [Canker-worms] will ever become so numerous in this climate 

 as to do us any material injury. I have not seen it here only in a very 

 few instances, and am of the opinion that in these few cases the eggs 

 had been introduced upon trees brought from the more northern and 

 eastern States. They continued one season, and, from some debilitat- 

 ing cause, weakened and died out. 



The first serious occurrence in Kansas of this pest was in 1879^ 

 in the large orchard of D. AV. Houston, in Anderson county. 

 (See Report State Horticultural Society for 1880, p. 169; also, 

 Report State Horticultural Society for 1882, p. 154.) This or- 

 chard consisted of 4,000 trees. In 1879, first appearance, they 

 defoliated 300 trees ; the following year they defoliated 3,000 trees 

 in the same orchard, "leaving the trees," to use Colonel Houston's 

 words, "as bare of foliage as they were in January." 



They next appeared in Neosho, Allen, Woodson, Montgomery, 

 Chautauqua and Douglas counties. The following year they 

 were observed in Osage, Cofiey, Wilson and Elk counties in ad- 

 dition, and in that portion of the State embraced by the lower 

 Neosho and Verdigris rivers and their tributaries the injuries 

 were very severe. In 1884, the worms did not appear in such 

 abundance in the infested region. 



