78 



REPORT ON INSECTS OF MONTREAL. 



Albert F. Winn, Westmount. 



I have again the difficulty of submitting a report about nothing; for 

 during the year no specimens of nor enquiries about injurious insects have 

 reached me. The crops seem to have been excellent — perhaps the scarcity 

 of insect life has a good deal to do with this fortunate condition, the more 

 bugless years we have the better for the agriculturist and the horticul- 

 turist. The very late cold spring in 1909 checked effectually the tent cater- 

 pillars, which appeared in very considerable numbers early in May, making 

 their well-known little triangular webs in the apple and choke-cherry trees. 



There were very few Tussock Moths about Montreal, and at the 

 present time there seem to be less of the egg-masses than almost any spring, 

 if not any spring for twenty years. This is by no means a sign of continued 

 exemption from this conspicuous and untidy caterpillar, rather the 

 contrary. 



During the month of August great swarms of the snow-white linden 

 moth, Ennomos subsignarius, appeared about the street lamps in the city, 

 making a phenomenon resembling a miniature snow-storm at nearly every 

 street corner ; on several evenings and on the following days the trees and 

 buildings were spotted all over with the tens of thousands of pure white 

 moths, all holding their wings folded back over their bodies as the butter- 

 flies do at rest. That these moths bred in the woods withiu a few miles of 

 Montreal is possible, but that thy were migrants is much more likely. 

 Usually the moth is of quite rare occurrence in this Province. 



The fall web-worm's nests were not so numerous as in 1908, but still 

 an eye-sore. It is to be hoped that the new administration at the city hall 

 will take some steps towards protecting and looking after the rapidly 

 diminishing rows of trees. Between the insects, the lack of moisture at 

 their roots owing to cement roads and sidewalks, and the heartless manner 

 in which great boughs are removed to allow electric wires to have the right 

 of way, the trees of which Montreal used to be so justly proud are having a 

 hard time of it. As in their native haunts when the original timber is cut 

 a new growth of another sort springs up, so we in Montreal have now a fine 

 collection of telegraph, telephone and electric light poles of various sizes, 

 shapes and colours on which this Society might very properly introduce 

 some destructive insect or fungous pest, if one could be discovered with 

 such depraved tastes. 



