[ 434 ] . • 14 



Chapin, of East Bloomfield, New York, and Mr. L. Barnes, of Blooming- 

 dale, Illinois, have availed themselves of this circumstan(;e for the pur- 

 pose of removing the wormy apples from the trees, before the worms 

 have escaped. Mr. Chapin's plan is to beat off the wormy apples, but 

 Mr. Barnes adopts the method of picking them off by means of a wire 

 hook attached to the end of a pole. These two methods can be very 

 usefully combined by first jarring or beating off those apples which 

 readily fall, and then going over the trees a second time with the pole 

 and hook. The apples thus removed should, of coiu-se, be fed to swine 

 or otherwise treated so as to destroy the worms within. Too much value 

 cannot be attached to these simple^ exi^edients, which, in the case of a 

 few choice trees or even a small orchard, might almost be made to super- 

 cede the necessity of any other treatment. 



3d. Gathering the wormy wind-fall apples from the ground, or letting 

 sivine or sheep have tlie range of the orchard. — This plan has been gene- 

 rally recommended as of very great importance. Its efficacy will de- 

 pend, of course, upon the proportion of worms which fall to the ground 

 in the apples, as compared with those which leave the apples whilst 

 hanging upon the tree. Those which crawl down the branches spin up 

 before reaching the ground, and those which let themselves down by a 

 thread, would, for the most part, be detected only by birds or by do- 

 mestic fowls, and as there is reason to believ^e that they usually perform 

 this act in the night, even these must fail to capture them. 



With regard to those wind-falls which contain worms, it is necessary 

 to gather them frequently, that is, every day or every second day at 

 farthest. The apples do not usually fall tni the worms are nearly ma- 

 tured, and they leave them in the course of a few days. If you exam- 

 ine indiscriminately a large number of wind-faU apples lying under the 

 trees, you will be surprised to find how few worms they contain, they 

 evidently having left the fruit before it fell, or soou after. 



But the most important question in this connection is, what propor- 

 tion of the worms leave the apples before they fall from the treei? I ■ 

 have endeavored to arrive at an approximate estimate upon this subject, 

 by putting two or more bands upon the same tree, upon the presump- 

 tion that the worms descending from above will spin up in the upper 

 band, and those crawling up from the ground, in the lower. The fol- 

 lowing tables, numbered for the purpose of reference, give the results of 

 these experiments. The wind-faU apples in every case were left as they 

 fell upon the ground. 



Ou the tenth of July, (1871,) I put bands as follows upon four trees, 

 the ground underneath being bare, or free from grass or rubbish of any 

 kind. One band was put about a foot fi'om the ground, another about 

 two feet higher ou the trunk, and others on two or three of the larger 



