288 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



frogs leave the pools and ascend the trees. The larger 

 species scale the trunks, sitting here and there like ugly 

 excrescences on the trees, but unobserved because of their 

 protective coloring, and feeding on insects which they find 

 on the trunks and branches. The little squirrel tree frogs 

 (Hyla squirrela), sticking to the limbs and twigs as flies 

 stick to a wall, leap in bird-like flight among the branches, 

 gathering tiny insects there. The wood frogs glean from 

 the dead leaves on the ground and from the undergrowth 

 their share of the tree's enemies, while at the edge of the 

 wood in the early morning light our old friend the toad sits 

 patiently at the foot of some huge tree, snapping up un- 

 fortunate caterpillars that descend the trunk. 



With the opening of the leaves the insect hordes increase. 

 Bark lice swarm on the trunks, plant lice appear on leaf, 

 twig and stem. As the warm days of spring revivify 

 vegetation and the sap ascends the trunks and branches, the 

 buds expand and open to the sunlight. The same warm sun 

 which brings forth the leaflets stirs to life the embryos within 

 the millions of insect eggs deposited among the trees, and 

 even before the leaves have opened, hordes of tiny cater- 

 pillars are seeking every crevice in the buds. 



A warm wind blows from the south, bringing new life to 

 leaf and insect. Tiny perforations are now plainly seen, 

 where each worm has gnawed bud or leaf. During the night 

 swift wings are heard, with many a cry and chirp, as the 

 birds come in on the warm south wind. And when the sun 

 again appears, filling the woods with warm odors from the 

 steaming ground, its rays light up a procession of beauty, 

 for the migrants from the south have come. Thus come they 

 always when the spring has prepared their food for them, 

 and now the wood is alive with merry warblers, swinging 

 actively from bough to bough and lightly pecking the tiny 

 caterpillars and plant lice from their resting-places on the 

 twigs and leaves. The birds pass on, destroying countless 

 numbers of insects as they go, and are succeeded by other 

 busy throngs. This goes on during the latter part of May, 

 when, notwithstanding the inroads made in their numbers by 

 the birds, the caterpillars have become so numerous and 

 destructive that in some places many branches are denuded 



