422 



NEW ENGLAND FARMER. 



Sept. 



PESTS OF THE FARM. 



EGiox is their name 

 and voracious are their 

 habits. They come 

 unbidden, in endless 

 varieties and forms. 

 They attack every- 

 thing, animal and 

 vegetable ; the hens 

 and the currants, the 

 hogs and the roses, 

 the horses and the 

 grain, the cattle and 

 the grass, the sheep 

 and the beans, the 

 dogs and the potatoes, 

 and, thanks to their 

 greedy appetite, they 

 devour each other when they find nothing else 

 to do. 



Now that the currant worm is taking a nap, 

 or passing through some of the forms which 

 insects so readily assume in order to continue 

 their mischief, we have another, which for 

 bulk, destructive habits and ugliness of ap- 

 pearance, surpasses all that have come yet. 

 He may be found on the outer twigs of the 

 elm, willow and perhaps other trees. Herd- 

 ing in groups, like the deadly sirocco or ty- 

 phoon, he destroys every thing he passes over. 

 In outline he is black and as ugly as sin, and 

 resembles a large oak log stuck full of steel 

 points a foot in length, though not, perhaps, 

 quite as big as a large oak log ! But it is 

 easy enough to imagine him so. 



Harris calls the butterfly from which the 

 ugly looking fellow proceeds, the Antiopa 

 butterfly, and fays their caterpillars live 

 together in great numbers on the poplar, 

 willow, and elm, on which the first broods 

 may be found early in June. They are black, 

 minutely dotted with white, with a row of 

 eight dark brick-red spots on the top of the 

 back. The head is black and rough with pro- 

 jecting points ; the spines, of which there are 

 six or seven on each segment, except the first, 

 are black, stiff, and branched, and the inter- 

 mediate legs are reddish. When fully grown 

 they measure an inch and three-quarters in 

 length, and appear very formidable with their 

 thorny armature, which is doubtless intended 

 to defend them from their enemies. It was 

 formerly supposed that they were venomous, 



and capable of inflicting dangerous wounds ; 

 and within my remembrance many persons 

 were so much alarmed on this account as to 

 cut down all the poplar trees around their 

 dwellings. This alarm was unfounded; for, 

 although there are some caterpillars that have 

 the power of inflicting venomous wounds with 

 their spines and hairs, this is not the case 

 with those of the Antiopa butterfly. The 

 only injury which can be laid to their charge, 

 is that of despoiling of their foliage some of 

 our most ornamental trees, and this is enough 

 to induce us to take all proper measures for 

 exterminating the insects, short of destroying 

 the trees that they infest. He has sometimes 

 seen them in such profusion on the willow and 

 elm, that the limbs bent under their weight ; 

 and the long leafless branches, which they had 

 stripped and deserted, gave sufficient proof of 

 the voracity of these caterpillars. The chry- 

 salis is of a dark brown color, with large 

 tawny spots around the pointed tubercles on 

 the back. The butterflies come forth in eleven 

 or twelve days after the insects have entered 

 upon the chrysalis state, and this occurs in the 

 beginning of July. A second brood of cater- 

 pillars is produced in August, and they pass 

 through all their changes before winter." 



The only means which we have found of 

 destroying this caterpillar is by climbing 

 the tree and 6utting off the twigs upon which 

 they are collected, and then crushing them 

 under foot. But then there is altogether too 

 many of them to render this operation an 

 an agreeable one. Will some one try car- 

 boline, or a shock of lightning that can be sent 

 broadcast among them, and tell us how to 

 apply it. 



We certainly have a busy time of it in these 

 parts, in checking the inroads of our visitors 

 from going too far. We have here the parse- 

 ley caterpillars, the pea-weavil, the plant-lice, 

 pear, peach, apple, and locust borers, the 

 June moth that riddles the apples, the curcu- 

 lio who destroys the plums, skippers, jumpers 

 and joint-worms, gad-flies, dor-bugs, and 

 drop-worms, saw-flies and fire beetles, squash- 

 bugs, bee-moths, frog-hoppers, pear slugs, 

 gnats and musquitoes, to say nothing of the 

 millions of bark-lice which attack the fruit 

 trees, and as many more which prey upon the 

 domestic animals ! 



No wonder that we are an industrious people. 



