195 



not a specimen was found in the city, or close to it, and it is certain 

 that the sparrows are responsible for this fact. On one occasion I 

 brought in about a dozen specimens and put them on the j)iazza for the 

 children to play with. It delighted them for a time, but one after the 

 other made its escape and How for the trees in front of the house; not 

 a specimen ever got beyond the tirst or second tree. Most of them 

 were captured by the sparrows before reaching the first tree and were 

 torn to pieces. One or two of the specimens were brought to me in a 

 fragmentary condition by -my next-door neighbor, and if any unfortu- 

 nate creature did actually emerge anywhere within the city limits it 

 lived so short a time as to be unnoticed. This is rather a curious fact, 

 too, because the ordinary harvest ily {Cicada tihicen) occurs within 

 the city limits in any number and does not seem to be in the least dis- 

 turbed by the sparrows. 



In many places the melon lice were very destructive during the pres- 

 ent season, and acres of vines were plowed up because of the injury 

 caused by them. The appearaceof these insects was expected by me, 

 when the last week of June and the tirst days of July passed without 

 a cold storm. For t\vo years we have had, in New Jersey, either in the 

 last days of June or the tirst days of July, very heavy storms, gener- 

 ally accompanied by heavy winds and by cold rain, and as these 

 occurred just at the lime at wliich the aphides migrate from their win- 

 ter and spring food plant, which 1 regret to say I have not yet been 

 able to discover, they have been so nnicli reduced in numbers that no 

 injury was caused by them and only a few plants here and there became 

 infested. During the present season there was no rain in the central 

 and southern part of New Jersey from the hrst daj'S of June to the last 

 days of July, and in some localities there has been only a trace of rain 

 ui:» to tlie present time. Tliis was ideal weather for the aphides, and 

 they took advantage of it. The presence of the insects gave me an 

 opportunity of making soznetests of bisulphide of carbon, firstsuggested 

 for this i^urpose, as far as I am aware, by Prof. Garman, and from these 

 experiments, of which I will speak more at length elsewhere, it appears 

 that this material can be i)ractically used in the tield as against these 

 insects early in the season. 



Sweet potatoes were much retarded by the dry weather and this pre- 

 vented them from growing away from their ordinary insect pests, the 

 Cassida;. They were so long in starting that in many cases the beetles 

 and their larvjc destroyed the entire shoots, and the ground was then 

 so dry that it was simply impossible to set out new plants. Much dam- 

 age was therefore done, which, although directly attributable to the 

 insects, was yet indirectly chargeable to the dry weather; because with 

 an ordinary amount of moisture the plants would have grown away 

 from the insects. The most satisfactory method of dealing with these 

 creatures, up to the present time, is to let chickens run in the tields, 

 and many of the growers, nowadays, set their chicken coops in the 

 .■32IG— No. L' 10 



