1913.] PUBLIC DOCUMENT — No. 31. 227 



due to increased fungous injury, which might be largely pre- 

 vented by proper spraying. 



Early putting on of the winter flowage docs not appear to 

 affect the fruit worm much. A 10-acre bog, which lost most 

 of its crop by this insect in 1911, was flowed for the winter 

 on October 5, and the flowage was not let off until May 8. Even 

 after this long flooding the fruit worms destroyed about 50 per 

 cent, of what would otherwise have been a good crop. 



Spraying, as a fruit-worm remedy, is still of doubtful practi- 

 cability and probably always will be. The need of such a 

 treatment, however, is not very great, for, as already stated, this 

 insect can be treated wnth water where winter flowage is avail- 

 able, and the total acreage of bearing bog v/hich cannot be win- 

 ter-flowed at a reasonable expense is a very small percentage 

 of the total bog area of the Cape. Moreover, most bogs which 

 cannot be winter-flowed at a reasonable pumping expense are 

 not and never were good business propositions for various rea- 

 sons, and should never have been built in the first place. How- 

 ever, as there are a few such bogs which will pay a mod- 

 erate return if the fruit w^orm is kept within bounds, it seems 

 desirable if possible to find some treatment other than winter 

 flowage for this insect. 



A patch of 9 square rods on a dry bog badly infested with this 

 insect was resanded on ]\lay 23 to a depth of 1 inch, the up- 

 rights lieing raked up through the sand when covered by it. 

 It was thought that such sanding, while the insect w^as dormant 

 in its winter cocoon, might smother it, as it does the girdler, so 

 that the millers would not emerge during the following summer 

 to lay eggs for another brood of worms. The sanded area was 

 surrounded with a mosquito netting fence 8 feet high to keep 

 the moths from the surrounding bog from coming onto it ; but it 

 was not closed in at the top, as it was necessary to give bees 

 free access to the blossoms inside, and the moths, which appar- 

 ently never fly up more than 5 or G feet from the ground, would 

 probably not get in over the fence. Unfortunately, the new 

 growth had started considerably when the sanding was done and, 

 on this account, the injury to the buds was very severe, more 

 than three-fourths of them being destroyed. Earlier sanding 

 would have caused less injury. This experiment was only par- 



