REPORT OF TEE ENTOMOLOGIST AND BOTANIST 203 



SESSIONAL PAPER No. 16 



Dipping of Nursery Stoch.— The only safe remedy yet discovered, for the treat- 

 ment of nursery stock for the destruction of San Jose Scale when nursery stock is 

 being shipped from place to place, is fumigation with hydrocyanic acid gas. Many 

 experiments have been tried with various washes for dipping nursery stock to obviate 

 the expense and inconvenience of this operation but none of these have proved satis- 

 factory, nor as good, all things considered, as the method of fvunigation which has 

 been adopted by this department. Experiments, however, are being constantly tried 

 and if anything better is discovered it will be at once adopted. Nurserymen and fruit 

 growers now know that no injury whatever is caused by the fumigation and it is now 

 seldom advanced by shippers as was the case a few years ago as an excuse for bad 

 packing and poor stock. 



Th'e San Jose Scale Act has now been in force for ten years having been passed 

 on the 18th March, 1898. Since the fumigating houses were established in 1900 con- 

 stant examination has been made of nursery stock which passed throiigh the fumigat- 

 ing houses and on no occasion has a living scale been detected upon trees which have 

 been treated by our superintendents. Many thousands of fruit trees and ornamental 

 shrubs worth large siims of money have been imported by nurserymen and others in 

 all parts of Canada, and although the scale can be killed with certainty, by fumiga- 

 tion in the way it is done in the federal fumigating houses, no injury whatever has 

 been done to the stock by the treatment which it has received to free it from any 

 possible presence of living scales. 



In view of the above it may be justly claimed that the Honourable the Minister 

 of Agriculture has taken every wise step to protect the fruit gi'owers of Canada 

 against a further introduction of this most serious enemy, and at the same time has 

 done everything which was reasonably passible to protect the interests of nurserymen 

 and others who wished to import stock from outside the Dominion. The methods 

 adopted for the fumigation of stock are those which are most highly approved by 

 experts and have been found perfectly effective in destroying any scales which 

 occurred on nurseiy slock which was treated. The governments of Ontario and 

 British Columbia have also adopted drastic measures to prevent the spread of the San 

 Jose Scale from known points of infestation to new localities. At the present time 

 aft^r eleven years from its first appearance it may be said that the only place in 

 Ontario where the scale now exists is the comparatively small area running from 

 Essex county along the north of Lake Erie and extending to the county of Went- 

 worth, west of Lake Ontario. In British Columbia the scale has been detected at two 

 places, Kaslo and Spence's Bridge, but nt the former of these the trees were carefully 

 sprayed and since that time no further infestation has been detected. At Spence's 

 Bridge the whole orchard was cut down. The San Jose Scale has never been found 

 in the maritime provinces, the prairie provinces, the province of Quebec, nor in any 

 oth'er part of Ontario than that mentioned. As this insect seems to be able to thrive 

 in all districts where the peach can be grown commercially it is most advisable that 

 fruit growers in such districts should be on the alert to detect any strange scale insects 

 upon their trees and have them examined by experts as soon as possible. Prompt 

 attention at tlie beginning of an outbreak will frequently save great destruction of 

 trees and crops and the expenditure of much money. 



The Hose Chafer, Macrodad.ylus siibspinosus, Fab. — Injuries to grapes, peaches 

 and apples by the Rose Chafer are of yearly occurrence in the Niagara districts of 

 Ontario, but during 1907 their depredations were so serious that in many vineyards 

 the whole crop was destroyed and the large wine-making firm of Bright & Shirrifp, 

 who buy between two and three hundred tons of grapes in the immediate neighbour- 

 hood of their establishment at Niagara Falls South, could not last year buy locally 

 nearly all the gi-apes they required and had to import them from other districts. Mr 

 T. R. Stokes, secretary of the Board of Trade of Stamford township, and of Niagara 

 Falls South, in writing on this subject, says: — 



