268 



near by. The frieud with whom I was stayiug belonged to the reportorial staff of 

 one of the leading dailies in the city, and I was thns fortunate enough to be able to 

 quickly' sound the alarm. A few days later I again called the attention to the 

 necessity of active measures being taken at once, and gave a detailed account of the 

 insect in the same paper. Thus, I believe, I veas the first to call the attention of the 

 citizens to the pest, and by frequent short notices and telegrams sent at the request 

 of the editor, public opinion was at last aroused so that in the spring 44, OOOso-called 

 "cocoons" were gathered by one boy. (I had suggested this method of interesting 

 the school children in one of my communications.) This spring the prizes were 

 larger and the work was vigorously pushed. Competition was close and when the 

 time limit expired over 8,400,000 "focoons" had been gathered by the children. 

 The figures quoted from the American Cultivator represent only those "cocoons"' 

 gathered by one school before May 10. The contest did not close until June 1, when 

 one boy was credited with 3,038,713, and another boy with over 1,500,000! I was 

 somewhat curious to know just what these "cocoons" were, so I asked the princi- 

 pal of one school to send me a box just as they came in. I received a cigar box 

 packed full and said to contain 2,000. It was a very dirty mess, as they had evi- 

 dently been gathered in the vicinity of car-shops or other large coal-burning manu- 

 factories, so I did not question the accuracy enough to count them. I especially 

 desired to find out how many of the "cocoons" were egg-masses among the stated 

 2,000 " cocoons." Most of the mass did consist of the cocoons of the male moth, all 

 empty, of course. The city papers have reported the pest greatly reduced in num- 

 bers this summer as compared with other years. There is no doubt that the $600 

 expended in prizes by the Genesee Valley Forestry Association this spring was the 

 cheapest and most e ective method of checking this pest that could have lieen used. 



A NEW ZEALAND MOTH-CATCHING PLANT. 



In our article upon the codling motli, in the annual report of this 

 Department for 1887, we referred on page 98, to the insect-catching 

 properties of the llowers of the dilferent species of Physianthus, and to 

 the interesting suggestion of a possible use for these plants as codling 

 uiothtrapsinNew Zealand by Dr. Cheeseman, of the Auckland Museum 

 and Mr. J. T. Campbell, U. S. consul at Auckland. We further stated 

 that a very large number of specimens of moths captured by these plants 

 were received from Mr. Campbell, but among them were no codling 

 moths. In Science Gossip for October, 1894, Mr. W. M. Maskell, of 

 the University of New Zealand, at Wellington, publishes an interesting 

 article upon this subject, identifying the principal moth catching plant 

 of New Zealand as Araugia alhens. It is a native of the Cape of Good 

 Hope, and was accidentally introduced into New Zealand. It captures 

 such moths as visit the flowers for nectar, the proboscis of the moth 

 being clasped by two pincer-like organs. Mr. Maskell states that a 

 plant of Araugia covering a space 10 yards in length may frequently 

 destroy as many as hundreds of moths in a night, and consequently 

 prevent the ravages of fifty times as many larva?. The varieties of 

 moths are not indicated, but the statement is made that the codling 

 moth does not frequent the plant. 



