July 28, 1897.] 



Garden and Forest. 



299 



variety of its food-plants indicate that it may become a 

 serious pest. 



During the latter half of May the caterpillars swarmed 

 from the defoliated Pear-trees over the ground and walks 

 and fences in search of food. Trees in full leaf in the path 

 of this hungry army were stripped in a few days. For 

 example, they attacked a large Cherry-tree covered with 

 dense foliage one morning, and five days later hardly a 

 green leaf remained on the tree and the half-grown fruit 

 was nearly devoured. In a badly infested orchard the 

 noise made by the feeding of these myriad caterpillars 

 could be plainly heard. They crawled over everything, 

 and the sweeping and the washing down of the masses of 

 caterpillars from piazzas and the walls of houses is of daily 

 occurrence. An annoying feature of the invasion was the 

 painful irritation caused by the insects when coming in 

 contact with the skin. The hairs of the caterpillar are 

 brittle and easily detached, and produce an intense irrita- 

 tion when they touch the skin, and in many cases the suf- 

 fering was so severe as to require the aid of a physician. 

 No birds except the English sparrow have been discovered 

 feeding on these caterpillars, and these took them but 

 sparingly, but the sparrows themselves have driven away 

 our native birds which are known to eat hairy caterpillars, 

 so that in this way they may aid the insects more than 

 they injure them. No predaceous insect has as yet been 

 found attacking them, and no parasites. In Europe it is 

 said that their thick hairs protect them from small birds, 

 but they have many parasites. 



As a remedy it is recommended to remove and burn the 

 egg masses in July before they hatch, which can easily be 

 done on shrubs and low trees within reach. While the 

 caterpillars are feeding on the surface of the leaves during 

 autumn the trees should be sprayed with arsenate of lead 

 or Paris green. The most effectual means of destroying 

 the insect, probably, is to remove and burn the tents at the 

 tips of the branches in winter with long-handled pruning- 

 shears for trees of ordinary height, and ladders may be 

 used for larger ones. The tents when cut should be gath- 

 ered and burned at once. If these methods have been 

 neglected and the caterpillars have emerged from their 

 winter quarters, the foliage should be sprayed at once with 

 arsenical poison. Later, when the caterpillars are very 

 numerous on a tree they may be jarred to the ground by 

 striking the branches with a mallet bound with cloth, and 

 if the ground is then sprayed with a strong kerosene emul- 

 sion all the caterpillars with which it comes in contact will 

 be destroyed. 



As long ago as the year 1734 laws were enacted in 

 France requiring landowners to destroy these caterpillars. 

 Later the laws were extended to include the gypsy-moth 

 and some other injurious insects, and Belgium and other 

 European countries have passed similar acts. These laws, 

 however, are not rigidly enforced, and since the insect is 

 found almost over the entire continent of Europe, the 

 question of exterminating it is not considered. What is 

 contemplated is the reduction of the pest to comparatively 

 harmless numbers, without considering the question of its 

 spread. In Massachusetts the conditions are quite dif- 

 ferent, and as „the insect is now found within a very lim- 

 ited territory, an attempt will be made to exterminate it. 

 The gypsy-moth is now found over a much greater extent 

 of territory and is a more difficult insect to deal with, and 

 surely if it is possible to exterminate the gypsy-moth the 

 effort to suppress this new pest is worth making. 



The wisdom of the act of Congress of 1895, which 

 required the publication of the annual report of the Secre- 

 tary of Agriculture in two parts, is made apparent by the 

 appearance once more of the Year Book of the Department 

 of Agriculture. Our readers will remember that the volume 

 which contains the business and executive matter neces- 

 sary for the Secretary to submit to the President and 

 Congress is quite distinct from this Year Book, which is 

 made up of papers specially suited to interest and instruct 



the farmers of the country and to explain in a general way 

 the operations of the department for their information. It 

 is not our intention to make any review of the contents of 

 the book at this time, which we may say consists of some 

 thirty papers, many of them illustrated, and all prepared 

 by experts in various fields of agricultural inquiry. We 

 give the titles and authors of a few of these papers : "The 

 Use of Steam Apparatus for Spraying," by L. O. Howard ; 

 "Some Common Poisonous Plants," by V. K. Chestnut; 

 "The Blue Jay and its Food," by F. E. L. Beal ; "Diseases 

 of Shade and Ornamental Trees," by B. T. Galloway and 

 Albert F. Woods ; "The Improvement of our Native Fruits," 

 by L. H. Bailey ; "Pruning and Training Grapes," by E. G. 

 Lodeman. It will be seen that subjects of this kind, treated 

 as they are by men of recognized standing in agricultural 

 science, are worth more than mere passing notice, and these 

 are followed by a hundred pages of tables, statistics and 

 condensed information, arranged for convenient reference. 

 In a prefatory note by Assistant Secretary Dabney it is 

 stated that these condensed statistics, together with prac- 

 tical recipes and directions, have been prepared with a view 

 of making this appendix a vade mecum for the farmer, so 

 that the series of Year Books, which are thoroughly indexed 

 for this purpose, will become a reference library of increas- 

 ing value to the agriculturist. An edition of 500,000 copies 

 of the Year Book has been issued for free distribution, and 

 the only regret we have about this publication is that it 

 has not been more carefully edited. Of course, this defect 

 is well known to Mr. Dabney, who states that the material 

 for this and the two preceding volumes of the series has 

 been prepared by busy scientific workers in the intervals 

 of other duties, and the only revision the work has received 

 has been such as it was possible for an executive officer to 

 give, who only had one assistant to help him. Since it 

 has become the annual practice to issue such a volume 

 and publish it in so large an edition, a wise economy 

 suggests that it should be carefully revised and edited by 

 a corps of trained specialists. 



Mr. John G. Lemmon contributes to the second part of 

 volume ii. of the Bulletin of the Sierra Club a paper on the 

 California Conifers, which will aid, no doubt, the enterpris- 

 ing and energetic climbers of the club to recognize the 

 trees they encounter in their mountain excursions and 

 thus to be in a position to add to our knowledge of the dis- 

 tribution of the Conifers of the California Sierras. Mr. 

 Lemmon's arrangement and treatment is practically simi- 

 lar to his previous works on the same subject. The present 

 part is devoted to Pinus and Larix, to be followed in a 

 succeeding number of the bulletin by an account of the 

 other genera of Conifers. We notice that Mr. Lemmon 

 recognizes more species of Pinus than other observers con- 

 sider desirable, but, after all, the limitation of species is 

 largely a matter of judgment, and Mr. Lemmon's opportu- 

 nities to see these trees in their native haunts has been 

 surpassed by that of only a few other observers. 



Notes. 



Redwood has been tested for paving purposes in San Fran- 

 cisco, and experiments have proved that it is a satisfactory 

 material. This means probably an increased demand for 

 Redwood timber and the more rapid felling of the limited 

 supply of that timber now standing. 



The Gardeners' Chronicle states that many letters have been 

 received by the editor in reference to the Victorian medals 

 spoken of in our London letter of this week. Some of these 

 are written in a strain of indignation, but they generally treat 

 the humorous side of the question. The editor makes the 

 wise comment that, considering the delicate nature of the 

 circumstances and the excellence of the intention, a discreet 

 silence will be most acceptable to all concerned. 



To prove that Indiana can still turn out some of the best 

 oak on the continent. The Northwestern Lumberman states 

 that thirty carloads of oak ship-timber have been sent from 

 Wabash to Toledo in sticks from thirty to forty feet long and 



