PINE SAWFLY. 253 



Heather, this is the best plan, as the rough material will all 

 help the cUarring of the soil, and burning of the cocoons." 

 (M.D.) 



With regard to clearing caterpillars off the trees, the fol- 

 lowing method was found successful on a plantation of about 

 eighty acres near Forres, which was infested by the larva of a 

 Sawfly : — 



" When the caterpillars were first noticed, a careful man 

 was provided with a pair of strong gloves, with directions to 

 examine the state of the trees daily, and when he found the 

 caterpillars — which are generally in clusters — to destroy them 

 by infoldmg the hrancli on wJdch they iv ere feeding in the gloved 

 hand and pressing it firmln. The caterpillars (which had not 

 appeared in the whole of the plantation, but in great numbers 

 in some parts of it) were thus prevented from doing any great 

 amount of damage." — (D. S.) 



Near Dunkeld (where Sawflies had been very injurious for 

 several seasons previous to 1879, on a young plantation of 

 two thousand acres of Scots Fir), an experiment was tried on 

 a small plantation of twenty acres, five miles distant from any 

 other Scots Fir wood, which, up to the date of the observations 

 sent, had proved successful. The plan adopted was to send a 

 number of boys through the plantation, each furnished with a 

 small vessel containing naphtha, and a brush roughly made 

 of feathers, with which the clusters of larvae were slightly 

 sprinkled or touched, when they immediately fell down, and 

 by this means the plantation was almost cleared. — (J. M'G.) 



In the case of a bad attack of Pine-leaf Caterpillars in 

 Roxburghshire, after various means of destroying them had 

 failed, — such as dusting the trees with quick-lime, — the use of 

 hellebore in solution, applied by means of the syringe, was 

 found a deadly application to the caterpillar and an effective 

 cure.— (C. Y. M.) 



In the case of larger trees, much good may be done by 

 shaking down the caterpillars and destroying them before 

 they have time to creep away. They fall in great numbers 

 (especially when chilled and slightly torpid in the morning) on 

 the tree being shaken or jarred ; ] and in German forestry it 

 has been found that one man to shake the tree, accompanied 

 by two women or children with a sheet for the caterpillars to 

 fall on, from which they can be collected and destroyed, can 

 clear fifteen trees of twenty-five years' old before nine o'clock 

 in the morning. — (Th. H.) If some fresh Pine boughs are 

 strewed under the trees before they are shaken, the fallen 

 caterpillars will collect immediately on the sprays, and may 

 be trampled on, or more conveniently shaken on to the cloths 

 to be destroyed than by simply letting them drop on the 

 cloths from the tree. 



