236 IMASSACHUSETTS HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



of which the President shall be chairman, be appointed with full 

 power to take such action in this matter, in connection with the 

 Board of Agriculture, after conference or correspondence with the 

 various Agricultural and Horticultural Societies in the state, as 

 shall seem to them expedient. Your Committee believe that iu 

 this way the public feeling in regard to the expediency of the 

 measure proposed can best be ascertained, and if it be decided to 

 petition the Legislature, the prospect of success will be much 

 greater if supported by these organizations throughout the state, 

 than if made by any one society, however influential. 



Here, perhaps, this report might close, but the Committee deem 

 it well to add a word in regard to the education of the public in a 

 knowledge of the habits of such insects as are injurious to vege- 

 tation. If such knowledge were generally diffused, there might 

 be less need of legislation to effect the object we have in view, 

 but if such a need existed, the knowledge we speak of would make 

 it far easier to procure the needed legislation. Or if such legis- 

 lation shall be deemed inexpedient, then we must rel}^ wholly on 

 educating the people to the possibility and necessity of concerted 

 action to exterminate the insect pests of the gardener. 



The number of students in Entomology in the United States, is 

 now much greater than in any other branch of Zoology. At the 

 meeting of the American Association for the advancement of 

 Science, in 1873, so many were present that a sub-section of Ento- 

 mology was organized under the presidency of John L. Leconte, 

 who, in his address, gave some " Hints for the Promotion of Eco- 

 nomic Entomology in the United States," in which, besides the 

 methods in common use among gardeners for destroying insects, 

 he mentions the communication of fungoid disease (like pehrine, 

 which affects the silkworm) to other lepidopterous larvae, and re- 

 marks that he is extremely hopeful of the result of using this 

 method, having learned of an instance in which, from the commu- 

 nication of the disease by some silkworms, the whole of the cater- 

 pillars in a nine-acre piece of woods were destroyed. If this 

 disease could be introduced among the myriads of caterpillars, 

 which Mr. Moore spoke of in our recent discussion, as infesting 

 the wild cherry trees in Concord, it would doubtless be more effect- 

 ual in exterminating them than all the laws that could be passed 

 by the Legislature. Dr. Leconte also advises the introduction of 

 parasites, known to affect noxious insects in other localities. 

 Thus a parasite of a coccus, which attacks the apple tree, has prob- 



