BROWN-TAIL MOTH AND OTHER ORCHARD 

 MOTHS. 



Edith M. Patch. 



It is not the well kept orchard that will serve as a shelter and 

 breeding place for any serious pest. It is the apple tree down 

 the lane, too old and decrepit to yiekl fruit, but still able to put 

 forth leaves enough for a spring crop of bud moths and tent 

 caterpillars, or a summer brood or two of tussock moths. It is 

 the group of old pear trees, apparently owned by no one, with 

 their branches hung with undersized pears cracked to the centre 

 with scab disease, and later, when their fungus-mottled leaves 

 fall, festooned with nests of the brown-tail moth. It is the wild 

 cherry bushes in the back ground that show in the winter for the 

 menace they are, when they are seen to be distorted with black 

 knot and hung with old caterpillar webs and tents, besides being 

 decorated by brown egg rings and white egg clusters in provi- 

 sion for next season's caterpillars. It is the deserted or neg- 

 lected trees that are to be feared, for in them many species of 

 caterpillars dangerous to the orchard trees breed unnoticed, 

 perhaps for years, until they become numerous enough to make 

 conspicuous ravages. Then one orchardist cries, "It isn't much 

 use to try to raise apples with a new sort of caterpillar creeping 

 in every year," and another says, "The fact is, it doesn't seem 

 reasonable to expect a clean orchard with twenty or thirty pests 

 lurking in the outskirts," and turns his attention to neighboring 

 breeding places as well as to his orchard, and markets his crop 

 in spite of the "new pest." 



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