366 ANNUAL REPORT 



much confined to Duchess, Tetofsky, the Siber iansand hybrids; 

 Wealthy and several of the newer Russians are being planted 

 freely. 



Many of our farmers are anticipating wonderful results in the 

 near future, as the agents of the L. L. May & Co. , St. Paul, Nur- 

 sery have been through here selling quite freely of the Gideon 

 and other "ironclads," and some fellows from down south, repre- 

 senting the "Sparta, Wis., Chain Nurseries," have helped out 

 the assortment by inducing them to buy liberally of "budded " 

 and "whole stock" trees. (They are made hardy by this process, 

 you know they say.) There may possibly be one drawback to 

 these chain nursery trees, as unfortunately the Chicago, Mil- 

 waukee & St. Paul Railroad has two routes, and they were 

 shipped via Savana instead of via Sparta. 



INSECTS. 



Some of the insect enemies were more numerous and destruct- 

 ive to our trees and fruits than usual, the dry season seeming 

 favorable for their development. The tent caterpillar has been 

 the most conspicuous and has done great injury to the fruit and 

 shide trees, and even to berry bushes, by nearly defoliating 

 them, and marring their beauty by the multitude of their webs. 

 They live in communities of three or four hundred individuals, 

 under a common web or tent, which is made against the trunk 

 or underneath some of the principal branches of the tree. The 

 eggs from which they are hatched are placed around the ends 

 of the branches by a moth during the autumn, forming a wide 

 kind of a ring or bracelet, consisting of several hundred eggs in 

 the form of short cylinders standing on their ends close together 

 and covered with a thick coat of brownish waterproof varnish. 

 The young caterpillars emerge from their eggs about the time of 

 the unfolding of the leaves, or by the middle of May, and the 

 first sign of their activity appears in the formation of a little 

 angular web or tent, somewhat resembling a spider's web, 

 stretched between the forks of the branches a little below the 

 cluster of eggs. Thgy remain concealed under the shelter of 

 these tents at all tim3S when not engaged in eating. As they 

 increase in age and size they enlarge their tent, surrounding it 

 with new layers or webs, until it sometimes gets a diameter of 

 eight or ten inches and a length of sixteen to twenty inches. 

 They come out at stated times to feed and all retire at once when 



