NOYES AND OBSERVATIONS. : 255 
serious menaces to forest lands, while the last is mostly a pest of 
shade and street trees. The application of an arsenical poison, 
usually arsenate of lead, has been in vogue for over a decade, and the 
results, wherever the infestation was sufficiently serious to warrant 
treatment, have been more than satisfactory in all cases where the 
application was thorough. There has been no lack of ‘ controls,” 
since unsprayed trees, groups of trees, or areas, in some instances 
hundreds of acres in extent, have stood adjacent, and in almost every 
case there was not the slightest difficulty in distinguishing between 
the sprayed trees, with an abundance of foliage frequently almost 
uninjured, and the unsprayed trees, with badly mutilated leaves and 
in not a few cases almost entire destruction of the foliage. Sharp 
demarcation between well-sprayed and poorly treated foliage has 
been evident in many instances on individual trees. Much of this 
has been possible only by the development of sufficiently powerful 
apparatus so that there would be a quick and uniform distribution 
of the poison. The high-powered outfits now used for much forest 
and shade tree work in the North-eastern United States permit the 
thorough spraying from the ground of even the largest maple or elm 
within two or three minutes. The work is so thorough that it is 
very difficult to find leaves which have not been fairly well covered 
with the poison, while those entirely untouched are almost non- 
existent. The progress made along these lines is remarkable, and 
can be explained only by the fact that insect ravages were So serious 
as to necessitate drastic action of some kind. There are some 
observations in the above-mentioned article upon the probability of 
destroying bire”'by spraying. There is no section of the world 
where the application of poison has been more general and extensive 
during the past decade than in Hastern Massachusetts, a locality 
where tons of arsenates have been applied to orchard, shade, and 
forest trees annually. In spite of this work there has been no 
undoubted evidence adduced of the destruction by poison sprays of 
any number of birds in this area. There is no question but that 
plagues of caterpillars disappear automatically owing to natural 
causes of one kind or another, and, in certain cases, spraying of more 
or less thoroughness may wrongly be considered the decisive factor. 
This is especially likely to occur in the case of outbreaks by native 
insects. ‘This, however, is very different from the serious annual 
deyastations mentioned above which have occurred in so many New 
York and New England localities, and here at least there can be no 
question as to the marked benefits accruing from the judicious use 
of insecticides—H. P. Frnt, State Entomologist; Albany, N.Y., 
September 29th, 1916. 
THE OviposiTion of CauLopurys (THEcLA) RUBI.—On May 20th 
last a female of the above species was observed on the open North 
Downs, some distance from its usual bushy haunts, at about 11 a.m. 
She was seen to be egg-laying, the plant chosen in this case being 
Lotus corniculatus. The amount of leisured, fastidious, and painstaking 
choice shown by the butterfly thus engaged, surrounded as she was 
by acres of the Lotus, was very striking. The plant was in various 
stages of growth, from that of full flower to short undeveloped heads 
containing minute and scarcely perceptible flower-buds sunk below 
