228 MASS. EXPERIMENT STATION BULLETIN 180. 



February — the last of the winter months, with its remarkably low temperature 

 record — completes one of the coldest winters of official record. At Boston the 

 mean temperature for the three months, December, January and February, 1904-05, 

 24.8 degrees, is the lowest for the winter months since 1871, excepting 24.4 degrees 

 in 1903-04, and 24.5 degrees in 1873-74. The winter for New England, as a whole, 

 was the coldest since the estabUshment of the weather service of this section in 

 1884. The mean temperature was 17.9 degrees, and the next lowest is 18 degrees 

 for the winter, 1903-04. 



As far as the writer can determine, the greatest reductions in fruit-worm 

 activity in recent years, aside from that of this season, occurred in 1906 

 and 1913. The records of the Weather Bureau show that the total pre- 

 cipitation of 1906 on the Cape was the greatest of any year since 1904, 

 May, June and July being especially wet months. The winter of 1905-06 

 was mostly an open one. Both temperature and precipitation ran abnor- 

 mally high throughout the greater part of the period beginning with 

 October, 1912, and ending May 1, 1913, the winter being very open. 

 As affecting the abundance of the pest in 1916, it should be noted that 

 September, 1915, was a month of record high temperatures for its season, 

 that the winter 1915-16 was mostly very open, and that the first half of 

 this gro\ving season was very wet throughout. 



In the latter part of May the writer covered large numbers of fruit 

 worms in their cocoons, in quart cans partly filled with moist sand, with 

 different measured and uniform depths of sand ranging from three-six- 

 teenths of an inch to a full inch, and made records of the subsequent 

 emergence of the adult insects. Unfortunately, no check of worms not 

 covered with any sand was kept for comparison, but, judging from the 

 freedom with which the parasites and moths emerged through three- six- 

 teenths, one-fourth, three-eighths, one-half, five-eighths, two-thirds and 

 even three-fourths inch depths, it appears that resanding as commonly 

 done does not much affect the abundance of either the fruit worm or its 

 worm parasites. The full inch covering of sand seemed to smother most 

 of the moths and parasites, though a few of both came out even from that 

 depth. 



The WT-iter liberated a number of apparently female moths from a boat 

 on a pond on July 25, and three of them were seen to fly to the shore, a 

 measured distance of about 272 feet, in a single flight, a toy balloon being 

 anchored in the pond at their point of departure to measure from, and the 

 measuring being done with twine. This demonstration of this insect's 

 powers of flight is of interest in connection with the speculation concerning 

 the annual infestation of bogs from surrounding uplands and from neigh- 

 boring bogs. 



Fruit-worm eggs showed a range in Chalcidid {Trichogramma minuta) 

 parasitism of from about 25 to 75 per cent, on dry bogs and from none to 

 about 75 per cent, on those with winter- flowage this year. This parasite 

 was not found at all on half the flowed bogs examined, more than a quarter 

 of the eggs showing its presence on only 3 out of 30 such bogs. It appeared 



