The Forest Caterpillar 133 



The habit this species has of collecting in clusters as already described, is of 

 great assistance in accomplishing their destruction. 



During the brighter and warmer parts of the day they are usually very 

 easily dealt with by applying kerosene to the clustered insects. If one has 

 the apparatus for spraying, clear oil may be sprayed on the worms or a 

 bunch of cotton waste or any such material can be dipped in oil and the 

 clusters patted with it. If care is exercised to get as little oil as possible 

 on the bark of the trees, little or no injury will result. A very small 

 amount of oil, if it is on the caterpillars, is sufficient to destroy them, if not 

 at once in a short time. The masses of worms can also be killed by the same 

 sort of torch as is used against the tent caterpillar. Towards the end of the 

 caterpillar period, that is, just before they begin to spin the cocoons, a 

 great many may be destroyed, as we have seen, by brushing them from the 

 lower parts of the trees, fences or wherever they congregate, into a pan of 

 kerosene. If everybody who can would see that this is done, a vast num- 

 ber of the caterpillars would be destroyed. 



BANDING THE TREES 



It should always be remembered that banding does not protect those 

 trees on which the moths have laid their eggs. The moths fly freely in the 

 latter part of the season and place the eggs, in the manner described on a 

 preceding page, on the twigs, and for this reason, the. tops of trees are most 

 severely damaged. The caterpillars that hatch from an egg cluster begin to 

 feed on the nearest leaves and do not generally leave that tree so long as 

 there is abundance of food ; but if a tree is nearly stripped of leaves, or if 

 the branches have been jarred, they creep down the trunk, or drop to the 

 ground, and then soon seek another tree. When the caterpillars are small, 

 they may be easily jarred from the branches on which they are feeding, 

 and small trees may be cleared of them in this way, but when nearly 

 grown they do not so readily drop from the tree. Banding, is, therefore, 

 useful only as it prevents those caterpillars that have left the tree on which 

 they were hatched from crawling back or getting at the foliage of an unin- 

 fested tree. I do not mean in saying this to disparage banding, for it is 

 often very useful and I wish to recommend it. It must, however, be prop- 

 erly done and at the proper time. I have seen not a little banding in this 

 state that was absolutely useless because it was not done in time. It must 

 be obvious to any one that banding can be of no use after the caterpillars 

 have begun to spin their cocoons ; and yet I have seen bands applied with- 

 considerable trouble after every caterpillar had ceased to crawl for that 

 season. Bands should be applied to the trees not later than the middle of 

 May and it will be better to get them on by the first of the month for.'at 

 any timecaterpillars_are. likely.to be jarred from trees and the bands; will 



