21 



the power to declare badly infested orchards nuisances and order them 

 cleared of their pests, if possible, at the owner's expense or cut down 

 and burned. 



There is at the present day no justifiable excuse for allowing an 

 orchard to be overrun by Canker-worms for three or four years in 

 succession, when by proper management they may be overcome in one 

 year. 



It was formerly supposed that the moths came out only in the spring ; 

 this it is true is their normal habit, but it is now well known that 

 many appear late in the fall and early in the winter. In mild and 

 open weather they can be found in every month from October to 

 March ; but as a general thing those which come out in winter appear 

 chiefly between the middle of October and first of December and 

 again between the middle of February and middle of March. Those 

 who have been observing them carefully assert that if hard frosts 

 come early, the Canker-worm moth will appear early, and if the frosts 

 are late they will be late. As a matter of course the larger portion 

 remain in the ground until spring, and the preceding remarks appty 

 only to that portion which comes out in the winter. 



The following items bearing upon this subject are here introduced 

 as data to be used in forming conclusions. 



The first is from a letter of inquiry to the Western Rural: 



" When a school boy some sixty-five or seventy years ago, I went 

 with my brush and tar-pot day after day, toward evening, tarring ap- 

 ple-trees to catch or stop the millers from going up the trees to lay 

 their eggs. In those days we put the tar on the bark of the tree, a 

 little band around the body. This was done for weeks in early spring 

 when the millers came out of the ground. In later days the citizens 

 of New Haven put a trough of sheet lead around their elm trees and 

 filled it with oil, the worms being very destructive to the foliage of 

 the elm. 



I am an old man, in my seventy-ninth year. I lived in my native 

 State, Connecticut, over fifty years; in Wisconsin twenty-seven. A 

 farmer by occupation from childhood, a lover of fruit, I came in pos- 

 session of nw grandfather's farm and several apple orchards of choice 

 fruits. 



Some years our apple-trees were entirely divested of their foliage by 

 the Canker-worm. One year after they were badly eaten, I tarred my 

 orchard. In one of them that was eaten I caught no millers and the 

 foliage was not eaten at all, while all of my other orchards were badly 

 eaten. I could account for this orchard not being eaten only because 

 I plowed it (as we termed it, summer fallowed it) the last of June, after 

 the worm had left the trees and burrowed in the ground; I afterwards 

 cross plowed it and sowed it with rye. The next year I had a good 

 crop of apples on this orchard, and on my ether orchard.s none." 



WIRE-WORMS. (THE GRUBS OR LARVAE OF ELATEKS.) 



January, 1876, 1 received the following letter from L. B. Carlin, Esq., 

 Treasurer of Macoupin county, written, as will be seen, on behalf of 

 the farmers of that county : 



"I am requested by the Grange of which I am a member to write to 

 you for information upon the little pest called wire-worm. We have 



