86 HATCH EXPERIMENT STATION. [Jan. 



leave them. About five hundred circular letters were sent 

 to all parts of the country last spring, and from the replies 

 to these it appears that this insect already has a wide distri- 

 bution in this country, and it is quite probable that in time 

 it may become distributed wherever spruces grow. 



Considerable time has been devoted to the study of cran- 

 berry insects during the summer, three trips having been 

 made to the bogs on Cape Cod at the most favorable time for 

 the study of these insects. There are, however, so many 

 different species attacking the vines, and their mode of attack 

 is so different one from another, that to learn their hal^its 

 and the most effectual and economical method of destroying 

 them forms a problem of no easy solution. We are there- 

 fore not yet ready to publish a final l)ulletin on these insects. 



The army-worm has been unusually abundant the past 

 year in many parts of the State, and numl)erless calls have 

 been made on this department for information concerning 

 the insect ; in fact, the correspondence about the army worm 

 during the summer was far greater than that of all other 

 insects c^ombined. Fortunately, we had already pul)lished 

 a bulletin on this insect, and Mr. Kirkland, my assistant on 

 the gypsy moth work in Maiden, pul)lished an article on the 

 army-worm in the "Crop Report" for September, 1896. It 

 is not possible to foretell whether this insect will occur in 

 injurious numbers next summer; but such a case would be 

 quite unusual, as it has very rarely if ever in the past been 

 abundant in the same locality two years or more in suc- 

 cession. 



The elm-leaf beetle has not been so abundant in this State 

 during the past summer as it was the year l)efore, and this is 

 true, as I learn, in other States. What the real cause of this 

 decrease in numbers may be, I do not know. It may be due 

 to a rapid increase of its vegetable parasites favored by a wet 

 season. This, however, is all conjecture, as I have no posi- 

 tive evidence in the case. 



The San Jose scale has occupied much attention ; and, at 

 the request of the president of the Shad^^ Hill nurseries, I 

 sent an assistant to make a critical examination of their stock 

 at Bedford, Mass., and he reported to me that he discovered 

 a large amount of infested stock in that nurserv, which the 



