70 FIRST ANNUAL REPORT OP 



choice, and preferring them to all other things, tender grape buds and 

 shoots (to which they are also partial) not excepted — the miller al- 

 ways preferring to lay her eggs near the hill or mound over the roots 

 of the trees in the orchard; and if, as is many times the case, the 

 trees have a spring dressing of lime or ashes with the view of prevent- 

 ing the May beetles' operations, this will be selected with unerring 

 instinct by the miller, thus giving her larvae a tine warm bed to cover 

 themselves up in during the day from the observations of their ene- 

 mies. They will leave potatoes, peas and all other young green things 

 for the buds of the apple and the pear. The long, naked young trees 

 of the orchard are almost exempt from their voracious attacks, but I 

 have found them about midnight, of a dark and damp night well up in 

 the limbs of these. The habit of the dwarf apple and pear tree however 

 just suits their nature, and much of the complaint of those people 

 who can not make these trees thrive on a sandy soil, has its source 

 and foundation here, though apparently utterly unknown to the or- 

 chardist. There is no knowm remedy ; salt has no properties repulsive 

 to them, they burrow in it equally as quick as in lime or ashes. To- 

 bacco, soap and other diluted washes do not even provoke them ; but 

 a tin tube 6 inches in length, opened on one side and closed around 

 the base of the tree, fitting close and entering at the lower end an 

 inch into the earth, is what the lawyers would term an effectual es- 

 stopper to further proceedings. 



"If the dwarf tree branches so low from the ground as not to leave 

 6 inches clear of trunk between the limbs and ground, the limbs must 

 be sacrificed to save the tree — as in two nights four or five of these 

 pests will fully and effectually strip a four or five year old dwarf of 

 every fruit and wood bud, and often when the tree is green, utterly 

 denude it of its foliage. I look upon them as an enemy to the orchard 

 more fatal than the canker worm when left to themselves, but fortu- 

 nately for mankind more surely headed off.' 1 



Harris gives us the earliest intimation of this climbing character 

 in these worms, on page 450 of his work, where he says, that u in the 

 summer of 1S51, an agricultural newspaper contained an account of 

 certain naked caterpillars, that came out of the ground in the night, 

 and crawling up the trunks of fruit-trees, devoured the leaves, and re- 

 turned to conceal themselves in the ground before morning." Bat 

 until the above article, from which 1 have quoted, was published, the 

 fact was not generally known and none of the species had been iden- 

 tified. 



They seem to prefer the apple, pear and grape-vine, though they 

 also attack the blackberry, raspberry, currant, and even rose-bushes 

 and ornamental trees. Nor do they confine themselves to dwarf trees, 

 as the following extract from a letter by John Townley, of Marquette 

 Co., Wis., to the Practical Entomologist for March, 1S67, abundantly 

 proves. 



