544 NEW YORK STATE MUSEUM 
most vigorous methods will protect badly infested trees from severe 
injury. The masses of caterpillars found on the larger limbs and on the 
trunk can be crushed in large numbers with a stiff broom or thickly 
gloved hands. A more agreeable method is to spray these clusters with 
kerosene emulsion or with whale oil soap solution (one pound to four 
gallons), or to pour boiling water over them. 
This pest can be controlled by spraying with arsenical poisons where 
the trees are not too large for the apparatus at hand. If the caterpillars 
are nearly full grown and many are crawling to the sprayed trees from 
others, it is perfectly possible that all the foliage will be devoured before 
the pests have eaten enough poison to kill them, but under most condi- 
tions there need be little fear of the arsenical spray proving ineffectual if 
it is properly applied. The cost attendant upon this method will lead 
people to depend largely on other means. 
After the damage has been done, many of the insects are within man’s 
power and can be killed in their cocoons. From about the middle to 
the last of June thousands of cocoons can be collected with but little 
labor and if this is done opportunity should be given the beneficial 
parasites to escape before the cocoons are destroyed. Every healthy 
female pupa killed means one less egg mass to produce its approximately 
150 or 200 hungry caterpillars another season. 
It is believed that by fighting this insect in the egg, caterpillar and 
pupa states our shade trees can be preserved from serious injury. Native 
birds should be protected in all localities and, specially in forests, they 
must be our principal allies in subduing this terrible pest. Robins, 
orioles, chipping sparrows, cat birds, cuckoos, red eyed, white eyed and 
warbling vireos, cedar birds and nuthatches have been observed feeding 
on this insect by Caroline G. Soule. E. H. Forbush, ornithologist 
to the state board of agriculture of Massachusetts has kindly supplied me 
with the following list of birds observed feeding on forest tent caterpillars : 
oriole, black billed cuckoo, yellow billed cuckoo, crow, blue jay, redstart, 
nuthatch, woodthrush, chewink, black and white creeper, red eyed vireo, 
flicker and scarlet tanager. V.H. Lowe has observed the black capped 
chickadee feeding on the eggs. Prof. C. M. Weed states that the robin, 
chipping sparrow, yellow bird and English sparrow feed on the moths. 
17 year cicada. Considerable interest was manifested in the 
appearance in the western part of the state of brood 19 of Cicada 
septendecim Linn. The following list of localities, incomplete 
though it be, is given as a matter of record. Cayuga county: the cicada 
