24 MAINE AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMENT STATION. I913. 

 NATLIRAL CONTROL. 



A correspondent in Ellsworth sent us sj^ecimens of the pupae 

 of the spruce bud moth stating that she had observed the purple 

 martin to feed upon them. This ver}- useful bird, once com- 

 mon enough in Maine is now found locally distributed and 

 apparently decreasing in numbers. 



The part that spiders are evidently taking in holding the 

 spruce budworm in check has already been briefly indicated. 

 Our first observations on this point were made in the labora- 

 tor}'. To study the habits of the young caterpillars of the 

 spruce bud moth we had taken a small balsam fir tree about a 

 foot high, transplanted it into a flower pot and placed upon it, 

 a dozen or more needles colle:ted in the open which had upon 

 them freshly laid eggs of the moth. In due time the eggs 

 hatched but in spite of frequent examination very few small 

 larvae were seen, and these soon disappeared. As the tree was 

 small and kept under close observation in the laboratory the ab- 

 sence of the young larvae puzzled us until we chanced to see a 

 little spider holding in its chelicerae a young larva and sucking 

 it dry. Continued observation showed that the 'two spiders 

 which were present on the little tree were quite capable of ex- 

 terminating the several hundred newly hatched little larvae 

 which emerged from the dozen or more egg masses with which 

 the tree had been stocked. Unfortunately these little spiders 

 were lost so that we cannot now say to what species they be- 

 longed, excepting, that they looked like members of the family 

 Theridiidae. A few days after these observations were made 

 specimens of small spiders were collected from spruce trees on 

 which egg masses of the spruce budmoth were abundant. These 

 were submitted to ]\Ir. J. H. Emerton so well known for his 

 work upon the spiders of New England, who determined them 

 for us. In the lot were specimens of Theridion sprrale, T, dif- 

 f evens, Linyphia phrygiana, Dictyna volupis, and an immature 

 Tetragnatha. On the campus spruces, though egg masses had 

 been easily located, the only young caterpillars seen were a few 



