96 



THE PRACTICAL ENTOMOLOGIST. 



Doctors Differ. 



BY BENJ. n. 



Those who read Agricultural Journals must have 

 frequently noticed cases, where one Correspondent 

 stron<;;ly recommends some infallible remedy against 

 a particular Noxious Insect, and a few months after- 

 wards comes an answer from another Correspondent, 

 saying that he has tried the remedy and found it 

 worthless. By way of practical illustration, I will 

 give a few instances of the kind, taken at random 

 from various sources. The following is from the 

 Proceedings of the New York Farmers' Club print- 

 ed in the N. Y. Tribune, July 14, 186.3 : 



Oil upon Fruit Trees. — Mr. Hopkins says further: "In 

 your discussions before the Club, oil is recommended to 

 be rubbed on to fruit trees. I can only say, in regard to 

 a single instance. A gentleman in Warsaw, Wyoming 

 County, N. Y., applied common tanners' oil to his, both 

 pears, plums, and cherries, and he killed them every one. 

 They were thrifty, well-doing, healthy, and -very produc- 

 tive before, but they never bore fruit or leaf afterwards." 



The next example is from the same publication, 

 but of three years later date, (June 12, 1866.) 



Curculio — Jfeio Remedy. — Mr. Carpenter related the 

 case of someone, who has succeeded ingrowing plums by 

 keeping sheep in the orchard; and it was supposed by 

 the owner, that the odor arising from the sheep affected 

 the insects and kept them away. 



Mr. Hicks said his neighbors keep sheep, but it does 

 not keep away the curculio. 



But the most amusing case is from the Prairie 

 Farmer; and I give it in full, because it is instruc- 

 tive as well as amusing. Strange to relate, a one- 

 inch auger hole bored in a man's apple-trees and 

 filled with sulphur failed to kill the cankerworms! 

 Perhaps Mr. Lippincott would like to try next year 

 a two-inch auger upon his trees, or — better still — 

 a tool which is known as a post-axe and is used for 

 cutting large mortises in fence-posts. With such 

 a mortise cut deeply into every tree and filled with 

 a few pounds of sulphur, we should be apt, as folks 

 say out West, "to hear something drnp" — but 

 whether it would be the Cankerworms or the trees 

 that gave up the ghost, is another afiair. 



EXPERIENCE WITH THE CANKER WORM. 



Eds. Pr.iirie Farmer: — Some twelve or fourteen years 

 ago, the canker worm commenced in one corner of my 

 orchard, and increased year after year until they got all 

 over the orchard, and would eat the leaves off the trees, 

 until they would be as destitute of leaves in July as in 

 January; and after trying various remedies to destroy 

 them, I finally, with an inch auger, bored a hole nearly 

 through the trunk some three feet from the ground, and 

 put in IJ ounces of flour of sulphur, and plugged up the 

 hole by driving a piece of pine wood in even with the 

 wood of the tree, which effectually destroyed them the 

 first year, and the trees fruited well that year and have 

 ever since, and that is six years ago; the worms hatched 

 out as before, but died without doing injury. This was 

 done in the spring before the sap commenced rising ; I think 

 any time between now and the first of April is the projjcr 

 time to do it. Although the leaves were so impregnated 

 with the sulphur that the worms could not eat them, yet 

 we were never able to detect it in the fruit. — James 

 Tdcker, Warren Co., III. {Prairie Farmer, M.a.rch 31,1.S66.) 

 SULPHUR FOR CANKER WORMS A FAILURE. 



Ens. Prairir Farmer; — In your number of March 31st, 

 there is a communication from Mr. James Tucker of War- 

 ren county. 111., giving an account of his experience with 

 canker worms— how he destroyed them with sulphur. 



Well, the story was so plausible, straight and simple, 

 that I determined to try it, and did try it. I put twenty- 



seven pounds of flowered sulphur in and on about one 

 hundred and twenty trees; and the result is, that the fo- 

 liage of the trees is nearly all eaten up and the fruit near- 

 ly all destro)red. It cannot be that this result is from a 

 lack of faith in me, for my faith was so strong that I ne- 

 glected my usual remedy of getting them off with a pole, 

 and killing them at a stopping place mide of tar and 

 smeared on a strip of tin around the trunk of the tree. 



Let not Mr. Tucker think that I am censuring him, for 

 I have no doubt but what he thought the sulphur killed 

 the worms. 



Lately an old gentleman told me a similar story about 

 sulphur killing the worms in the short space of three 

 days. When I inquired of him what time of year the 

 sulphur was put in, he said, "in wool-carding time." 

 Now it is in wool-carding time that the worms mature 

 and disappear of their own accord, and hence his idea 

 that the sulphur had killed them. I am told of an orchard 

 in this country where they disappeared all of a. sudden 

 without any known cause. 



» » » » 



It seems to me there is not enough said in your paper 

 on this very important subject. Is it possible that the 

 ingenuity of man cannot invent something to prevent 

 a bug from crawling up a tree? The thing must be done; 

 it can be done, and if nobody else will do it I am deter- 

 mined to do it myself — Wm. p. Lippincott, Vernon, Iowa. 

 (Prairie Farmer, June 9, 1866.) 



As to the popular belief that sulphur is highly 

 ofiensive to the larvae of moths, Dr. Fitch tried the 

 experiment of feeding two parcels of the common 

 caterpillars of the Apple tree, one parcel on clean 

 leaves and the other parcel on leaves copiously 

 dusted over with sulphur. Wonderful to relate, 

 instead of dying, the sulphur-fed caterpillars throve 

 finely and actually outgrew those that had nothing 

 but the natural apple-leaves to feed on. But per- 

 haps, if the Doctor had bored a gimlet-hole in the 

 woodwork of his breeding-cage and filled it with sul- 

 phur, the result would have been difierent. Quien 

 sale"! Who knows? The sulphur would be just 

 as likely to rise into the leaves on this plan as 

 on Mr. Tucker's plan. Ask any botanist if it is 

 not so. For the sap can only take up such sub- 

 stances as are soluble in water; and sulphur, as 

 any one can easily prove by trying it, will not dis- 

 solve in water. 



The Grain Flant-lonse. 



Br BENJ. D. WALSH, M. A. 



It is not at all improbable that the Plant-louse, 

 which infested small grain a few years ago in the 

 Northern States, has now travelled south into 

 Georgia. At all events the wheat in certain sec- 

 tions of Georgia is now attacked by a small insect, 

 which the natives had never seen before; though, 

 as usual, there is no description whatever given of 

 it, further than that it is "small," which may mean 

 half an inch or the hundredth part of an inch long. 

 The New York Tribune, from which the following 

 extract from the Atlanta Intelligencer is copied, 

 facetiously remarks that " this enemy of the wheat- 

 growers. Judging from the description, is unlike any 

 of the Northern pests." Where the "description" 

 comes in, I cannot discover. For anything that 

 the Southern newspaper says to the contrary, the 

 new insect may be a beetle, or a four-winged fly, or 

 a two-winged fly, or a small moth, or a bug. But 

 let the article speak for itself; and as the Yankees 



