To prevent Insects frora climbing Trees. 17 



Art. III. JMelhocl of preventing the Canker Worm Gruh^ 

 and other Insects., from climbing Fruit trees. Communicated 

 by W., Cambridge, Mass. 



I SEND you an extract from a late English paper. It seems 

 well worthy of attention, and may very possibly furnish a bet- 

 ter antidote to the canker worm., than has yet been discovered. 

 It will be necessary to make the bands broader and larger 

 than is proposed in the paper below, and to use a much larger 

 quantity of the preparation. If, as the discoverer asserts, 

 the substance retains its viscidity for a considerable length of 

 time, it will doubtless be found much less troublesome and 

 expensive than tar. Some experiments I have made, promise 

 well. Care must be taken not to burn the India rubber in 

 the house, as an exceedingly fine dust is produced, which 

 spreads throughout the room. 



To prevent insects from climbing up fruit trees. — At a late 

 meeting of the Entomological Society, ISIr. J. H. Fennell 

 communicated the following successful mode of preventing 

 insects ascending the trunks of fruit trees: — Let a piece of 

 India rubber be burnt over a gallipot, into which it will grad- 

 ually drop in the condition of a thick viscid juice, which state, 

 it appears, it will always retain; for Mr. Fennell has, at the 

 present time, some which has been melted more than a year, 

 and has been exposed to all weathers, without undergoing the 

 slightest change. Having melted the India rubber, let a piece 

 of cord or worsted be smeared with it, and then tied several 

 times round the trunk. The melted substance is so very 

 sticky, that the insects will be prevented, and generally cap- 

 tured, in their attempts to pass over it. A small quantity of 

 India rubber is sufficient for the protection of twenty ordinary 

 sized fruit trees. — fV., Cambridge, Dec.,, 1840. 



We would recommend a tiial of the above plan to our 

 friends who have trees which have suffered, or are likely to 

 suffer, from the depredations of the canker worm. It has 

 always appeared to us, that the application of tar, on a band 

 of cloth around the tree, was a safer and surer method of pre- 

 venting the canker worm grub from ascending the stem, than 

 the patent troughs, so styled, and we are supported in our 

 opinion, by the testimony of several gentlemen who have tried 

 VOL. VII. — NO. 1. 3 



