The Tent Caterpillar, Nature-Study and Civic 

 Improvement 



Ida Agnes Baker 

 Washington State Normal School 



Last summer I saw the statement that the Boy Scouts were 

 organizing a drive on the tent caterpillar. The work was certainly- 

 needed but the enemy was not routed and never will be until the 

 work is conducted more intelligently than in a summer drive. 



Like the rest of the practical work, it is up to the school teachers 

 of the state to push things. Every school in a district where there 

 has been the pest of the tent caterpillar should have lessons this 

 school year on the life history of the enemy, consisting of field 

 lessons and terrarium demonstrations in the class room, and 

 including at least one reading or story. 



Now is the time to begin. Go out under the common red aldsr 

 (wild cherry in the east) trees. They furnish the tent caterpillar's 

 favorite food. If they were in your neighborhood last year, you 

 can depend upon finding their eggs, for next year's progeny, care- 

 fully stored on these twigs, sealed from the wet winter weather. 

 Pull down a branch and glance over the twigs until you see a place 

 that seems to be swollen a little and darker and shinier than the 

 twig. If you press it, it yields a little as the twig never does. If 

 you prick off the vamish-like covering you will find dozens of eggs 

 about the size of the head of a pin, arranged neatly and orderly 

 around the twig. 



During July and early August one could not turn on a light by 

 an open window without attracting several chunky little light 

 brown moths. 



I don't know whether it was aspiration or frivolity that kept 

 these moths fluttering about our lights but I know that when they 

 were at work they laid there eggs in these orderly rows and tucked 

 them in under this translucent varnish that will weather any 

 winter. They placed them just before our eyes the color of the 

 twig in perfect camouflage. 



However, when once you have seen a cluster they are not so hard 

 to find. The children's sharp. eyes are equal to the insects' cunning 

 instinct and now is the time for another drive. Last fall each 

 member of my nature-study class brought one in a mounted speci- 

 men of alder cones, old and new, of pistillate and staminate blos- 



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