30 WORCESTER COUNTY HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. [iS/Q 



Actual experience, during the last year, has taught your Sec- 

 retary that there is at least one effective safeguard from the 

 depredations of birds — remedium felhium. A cat — the pet of 

 a young daughter — has not failed to supply her successive 

 broods with their daily tiirdiis. It cannot be claimed that she 

 is of any improved breed, nor that possession of an extra toe 

 upon either fore-foot has rendered her faculties more acute. 

 But this at least may be asserted, with positive assurance, that 

 she has been "bred to a feather." 



If you would derive any benefit from birds — designed to be 

 fer(Z natune — assuming the possibility of benefit under any 

 circumstances, — stop domesticating and petting them ! Those 

 that were created insectivorous, will obey their instincts, if not 

 pampered until their tastes are diverted and turned in an unnat- 

 ural direction. Withhold the protection of law for a while, that 

 their numbers may be thinned and that the report of the shot- 

 gun may inspire a wholesome fear. Thereafter, and only then, 

 may you engage in the ceaseless struggle with insects, which 

 yearly grows more onerous, convinced that your chances of suc- 

 cess are not lessened, if they have not been facilitated, by your 

 own efforts. 



That you will need all possible assistance against the Lach- 

 nosterna fusca — or Cock-chafer* — your vSe^r^/^rj/ believed when 

 writing his last Annual Report and is more fully persuaded now. 

 The wildest imagination is staggered, at the official statements 

 of the countless hosts in which this insect swarms over the 

 longest settled countries of Europe. They descended, in myri- 

 ads, upon Schleswig-Holstein, about the 20th of May. School 

 children were employed to attack them — shaking them down 

 from trees, on which they had settled, into sheets — then into 

 boiling water, or under rollers. On one large farm it is actually 

 stated that 130 tons were collected and paid for at the rate of 

 a half-penny per pound. As a practical set-off, — "the corpses 

 make a rich manure." 



" So likewise in Normandy is the Ver Blanc a name of terror 

 to the gardener." Nothing escapes them. Trees are denuded 



*More commonly known as the May-Beetle, e. w. l. 



