SECRETARY'S REPORT. 103 



our limits to give even a brief description of the various sorts 

 of insects which injure trees, gardens, and other cultivated 

 crops, and destroy the best productions of the soil. We shall 

 therefore confine ourselves to stating briefly some of the most 

 approved modes of counteracting the ravages and effecting the 

 destruction of a fevr of those which are the most injurious to 

 the cultivator. The preventive operations are those of the best 

 culture in the most extensive sense of the term, including what 

 relates to choice of seed or plant, soil, situation and climate. 

 Fall ploughing, by exposing worms, bugs, grubs, and the larvae 

 of bugs, beetles, <fec., to the intense frosts of our winters, is 

 usually beneficial. Insects may be driven off, and often their 

 complete destruction effected, by sprinkling over them by 

 means of a syringe, watering-pot or garden-engine, soap suds, 

 tobacco water, decoctions of elder, walnut leaves, lye from pot 

 or pearlash, whale oil soap, or they may be dusted with 

 sulphur, ashes, quicklime and other acrid substances. Loudon 

 says : " Salt dissolved in water is most injurious to insects with 

 tender skins, as the worm and the slug ; and hot water, where it 

 can be applied without injuring vegetation, is equally if not 

 more powerfully injurious. Water heated to one hundred and 

 twenty degrees or one hundred and thirty degrees will not 

 injure plants whose leaves are expanded and in some degree 

 hardened, and water at two hundred degrees or upwards may 

 be poured over leafless plants." A preventive against the 

 canker-worm, and some other insects, is to put a ring of tar 

 around the tree to prevent their ascent. Digging around the 

 tree for some feet in extent, and spreading air-slacked lime, 

 destroys the insect and is otherwise beneficial to the trees. 

 The caterpillar, one of the worst enemies to an orchard when 

 neglected, may be easily destroyed by a little attention. When 

 the nests in which they stay are small, they may be easily 

 crushed by the hand or twisted off by a bush or pole, and 

 crushed under foot. The method adopted by one of the com- 

 mittee has proved satisfactory, especially when the nests are 

 out of reach. A lock of tow or cotton wired to the end of a 

 light bamboo pole, is saturated with burning-fluid, and a match 

 being applied it is held under the nest ; it burns with a very 

 hot, quick flame, and with a little care will effectually destroy 

 both nests and worms without injury to the tree. 



