130 EXPERIMENTAL FARMS 
2-3 EDWARD VIL, A. 1903 
José Seale, without the slightest injury to the trees. These soaps are much more ex- 
pensive than the kerosene emulsion, and very much less troublesome to dissolve and apply 
than the lime and sulphur washes. For this reason they may be preferable for those 
fruit-growers who have a small number of fruit trees. They are useful against many 
other insects than the San José Scale, particularly the various kinds of other scale insects, 
the Pear Psylla, and some other insects which pass the winter beneath the flakes of the 
bark of fruit trees. The best time to spray trees is just before the buds burst in spring. 
The soap should be dissolved in hot water and applied as hot as is conveniently possible. 
3. Fumigation.—A very effective remedy for small trees, but one requiring the use 
of very poisonous chemicals and somewhat expensive apparatus, is fumigation with 
hydrocyanic acid gas ; hence, in view of the success which has been secured by the careful 
use of kerosene emulsion, I do not.consider this a practical remedy for orchard use. 
In addition to the above described work which has been done by the Provincial 
Government of Ontario towards finding a perfect remedy for the San José Scale, the 
greatest care has been taken by the Provincial Department of Agriculture that no 
nursery stock of any kind should be sent out by nurserymen which had not been 
thoroughly fumigated under government inspection. The Federal fumigation stations 
located at St. John, N.B., St. John’s, Que., Niagara Falls and Windsor, Ont., Winnipeg, 
Man., and Vancouver, B.C., through which ports, only, nursery stock is allowed to be 
imported into Canada, have been in active service, and a great deal of nursery stock has 
been brought into the country. © have again this year the greatest satisfaction in 
reporting that there has been no complaint from importers as to the slight delay which 
must occur, nor as to any injury to trees during the necessary unpacking and handling 
for treatment. The superintendents at all the stations have done their work carefully 
and intelligently, and no single instance has been brought to my notice of living scales 
being detected on trees after passing through the fumigating houses, or of injury to them 
by the gas. 
TWO NEW STRAWBERRY PESTS. 
During the past summer complaints were received from British Columbia of the 
presence in injurious numbers of two different kinds of caterpillars, which have not, I 
believe, been previously reported as doing harm to cultivated strawberries in Canada. 
Specimens of the larve: of both species were received from Mrs. C. E. Hickey, of French 
Creek, B.C. Writing under date of May 3, Mrs. Hickey, says: ‘I send you separ- 
ately some caterpillars. They have been doing considerable damage to our strawberry 
plants. Will there be another generation of them, and, if so, what should the plants be 
sprayed with?’ The specimens mentioned arrived in Ottawa on May 12 ; seven of them 
had changed to the chrysalis state during the journey, but the others were still in the larval 
condition. These also soon changed to chrysalis, and the moths emerged in due course, 
and proved to be Mesoleuca truncata, Hufn., *a species not at all uncommon in British 
Columbia, and almost all other parts of northern Canada. The caterpillar of this geo- 
meter is a looper and when full grown measures about an inch in length. It is slender, 
cylindrical, in colour yellowish-green slightly glaucous, and has pale indistinct longitu- 
dinal stripes along the bedy, viz., a double dorsal band of more intense yellow than the 
body, a subdorsal band of the same colour, but clear white on the anterior segments, and 
a distinct yellowish ventral stripe. The tubercles on the body are white, and each bears 
a single short slender bristle. The head and feet are concolorous with the body. Be- 
neath the anal fiap on segment 13 is a pair of prominent slender tails, tinged with pink, 
each bearing a slender bristle at the tip. When mature the caterpillar changes to a 
chrysalis within the folds of a leaf or between two leaves, which have been drawn to- 
gether by threads of silk. The larve which reached Ottawa alive, were putin a jar 
containing earth and some dried strawberry leaves. They did not enter the earth for 
pupation but changed to the chrysalis state as above. If these caterpillars should again 
prove troublesome in spring, the plants may be sprayed with Paris green or some other 
*= Petraphora truncata, Hbn. 
