STATE POMOLOGICAL SOCIETV. II9 



for it is more important in this connection to become familiar 

 with the insects than to Hsten to a long description of them. 



Prof. MuNSON : Several here today have asked what they 

 should do to this red-humped caterpillar and the yellow-neck. 



IMiss Patch : They are both very easy insects to combat. 

 They are gregarious, that is, going in big colonies or groups, and 

 if you will only look over your trees a little earlier in the season 

 than this — well, if you had begun to look them over late in July, 

 you would have found these caterpillars very young and in col- 

 onies of perhaps a hundred and fifty to two hundred right to- 

 gether, on the tips of the branches, and it is the easiest thing 

 in the world to clip those branches off and destroy the whole 

 brood. The trouble is, they come late in the season when we 

 get over looking for the spring caterpillars and they take us by 

 surprise. They come so late that it is rather a bad plan to spray 

 on the bearing trees. Arsenical sprays, any of them, arsenate 

 of lead or paris green will kill these caterpillars, and as the 

 damage is most noticeable with young trees which are not bear- 

 ing it is perfectly practicable to spray those. They are found 

 too on the older trees but of course a colony will make more 

 havoc on the small trees than on the larger ones. If you only 

 get in the habit of looking over your trees before the caterpillars 

 get so large and scattered over the branches, it is quite easy to 

 remove the whole colony from the tip of the branch and destroy 

 them by hand in that way. 



Professor G. M. Gowell: During the past three or four 

 years I have planted out a couple of hundred trees down here 

 on my little farm, and I find I am at work in another age. In 

 the old days we only had to fight the mice and the bark lice and 

 borers, — those were the only animals we had to fight. Now 

 these trees are being beset — only put there three or four years 

 ago — by something that eats every tree and branch and leaf, and 

 I am having to fight them all the time, — another class of insects, 

 of enemies. So that the work of growing an orchard today is 

 very different from that of growing an orchard a few years ago. 



Now regarding the work that the poultry rnay do in the 

 orchard. I believe in it. And I believe in it because the ordi- 

 nary orchard stocked to its capacity with poultry, hens and grow- 

 ing chickens, — there is nothing of which I know that will keep 

 that orchard under such clean cultivation and prevent the 

 growth of the grasses and weeds entirely, and if your orchard 



