70 WORCESTER COUNTY HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. [1898. 



thus have in living form under their own eyes the whole life 

 stories of many of our more interesting and important insects. 

 In the higher grades, and wherever practicable, they may study 

 and estimate the damage which a single pair of insects can do in 

 a season and get clear practical ideas of methods of destroying 

 them. During the study, series of specimens, the egg and egg 

 cluster, caterpillars or larva? of different sizes and ages, cocoons, 

 and chrysalids, and the male and female adult, may be perma- 

 nently mounted. The next year the class may work out some 

 other species in the same way. I should begin with the insects 

 that do the most harm or the most good and work from those 

 down to others of less importance, and we should find enough to 

 keep the child population busy, with something new and inter- 

 esting each year, for at least one hundred years to come. 



The Natural History Society offers to furnish convenient cases 

 in which the specimens may be preserved, to store and care for 

 the collections and to issue them to the schools as they are 

 needed. A great many valuable specimens are collected every 

 year, but the teachers and pupils go away in June and do not 

 come back until September, and when they do come back, it is 

 only to find a little pile of dust underneath where the specimens 

 had been to show how well the museum pests had enjoyed their 

 feast. But if we can have them saved from year to year by the 

 Natural History Society, we shall have in a few years collec- 

 tions, and plenty of them, of the insects which we want to know 

 most about right here in the city, collections which every child 

 can have in his hand some time during the year and study by 

 the natural method. This will result in the dissemination of 

 knowledge throughout the city which will be of untold value not 

 only educationally but horticultural ly as well. 



Of course you know better than I do the ravages which these 

 insects create. Take the coddling moth for example. I have 

 had a lot of apples counted this winter with the result that 

 something over ninety per cent., as they go in the ordinary run 

 of market apples, were wormy. Other pests in the way of the 

 railroad worm, the canker worm, the white marked tussock moth, 



