3 



it also undoubtedly hibernates as a moth, and there is some evidence 

 that it may pass the winter occasionally, although exceptionally, in 

 the egg state. 



The injurious brood may be the first, second, or third. The over- 

 wintered larvse may occasionally be so abundant as to attract notice, 

 but in the majority of cases it is the offspring of these overwintered 

 individuals wdiich cause alarm. 



In general it may be said that the worms are more apt to make an 

 injurious appearance in a rainy spring or early summer following a 

 season of comparative drouth. The present season (1894) bears out 

 these conditions in the Eastern States, and as a matter of fact the 

 army worm has been more abundant in certain eastern sections than 

 it has been since 1888. 



REMEDIES AND PREVENTIVE MEASURES. 



There is never any demand upon this office for remedies for the 

 army worm until it is almost too late to do any immediate good. 

 There are certain old-time measures which may be adopted to protect 

 certain fields from advancing armies, like the plowing of a furrow with 

 its perpendicular side toward the field to be protected and the subse- 

 quent dragging of a log through the furrow to keep the earth friable 

 and kill the worms which have accumulated in the ditch, and another 

 is the sprinkling of a strip of pasture or field crop in advance of an 

 army with Paris green or London purple in solution. In fields which 

 the caterpillars have already entered there is little which can be done 

 for their destruction which does not also involve the destruction of the 

 crop. The fields may be sprinkled by means of a broadcast sprayer 

 with an arsenical solution, or they may be rolled with a heavy roller 

 where one is at hand and the ground is level, or a flock of sheep may be 

 sent in, which will result in crushing most of the worms by trampling. 



In the great majority of cases, however, these latter measures are 

 unnecessary, for the reason that nature herself almost always takes a 

 hand in the reduction of the excessive numbers of the insect, either by 

 unfavorable weather conditions or by the excessive multiplication of 

 natural enemies and parasites, so that it is extremely rarely that we 

 hear of one army-worm outbreak immediately following another. 



In general, therefore, it may be said that, as soon as the worms are 

 discovered to be exceptionally numerous in a given field (and, as a 

 matter of fact, they are at first almost invariably restricted to the 

 immediate neighborhood of some definitely limited, permanent breed- 

 ing place), all energies should be devoted to the protection of the sur- 

 rounding crops by the means mentioned above, and the destruction 

 of the worms in the fields first attacked may be safely left to the last. 



There are many localities in which the army worm is never seen, or, 

 rather, is never known to be injurious, and these localities owe their 

 exemption undoubtedly to the unconscious use of preventive meas- 



