time of planting, so that a crop liable to attack is presented to its enemies at the season 

 of the year when they appear in such a condition that it cannot be injured. The plant- 

 ing of " traps " or small strips of a favourite food-plant to draw off the attack from 

 desirable crops. The destroying or masking the natural odour of some vegetables, by 

 scattering amongst them substances possessed of a stronger or disagreeable scent. 



Of the insecticides mentioned above, one, viz., pyrethrum, deserves more than a 

 passing notice, and its value for destroying house-flies and mosquitoes — those inveterate 

 and insatiable enemies to mankind — should be known to everyone. For the former all 

 that is necessary is to close the doors and windows, and puff a small quantity of the dry 

 powder ahout the windows ; in a short time the flies will be found lying on the window 

 sills and about the room, paralyzed and dying. For mosquitoes, however, which have 

 not the same habit as house-flies of flying frequently to the windows, but hide in dark 

 corners, it is necessary to burn some of the powder, when the fumes will penetrate into all 

 the corners and recesses, and perform the same useful office. This material, too, has 

 been found very useful out of doors for destroying insects upon those vegetables of which 

 the foliage is used as food. Although so deadly to insects it seems to have practically no in- 

 jurious effects upon human beings, cattle, and the higher animals. It is, to my mind, by far 

 the best remedy for the caterpillars of the imported, white cabbage butterfly. For this pur- 

 pose it may be diluted with four times its weight of common flour, and should be puffed 

 into the heads of cabbages, when it will kill every caterpillar it touches. Injurious 

 insects may be divided into three classes, according to the amount of injury they are 

 answerable for. " First-class pests " are those which occur every year, and do a large 

 amount of injury, unless they are kept in check by constant vigilance. Instances of 

 these are the Colorado potato beetle, cut-worms, as a class, root maggots, the timber- 

 borers, the oyster-shell bark-louse of the apple, the codling moth, and the plum curculio. 



" Second-class pests " are those which occur every year, but not often in such large 

 numbers as to cause wholesale destruction. Here, also, must be classed those which, 

 although they may appear suddenly in sufficiently large numbers in restricted localities, to 

 be classed as first-class pests in that locality, are not widespread, nor of general occurence 

 every year. Under the first division of this heading may be classed the army worm, as 

 it occurs in most parts of Canada. The red-humped caterpillar of the apple, the fall web- 

 worm, and wire-worms. Under the second division the pear-blight beetle (JT. dispar), 

 and the canker-worm, which have appeared for some years in parts of Nova Scotia as 

 first-class pests, but which are seldom known in other parts of Canada as injurious insects. 



" Third-class pests " are those which only occasionally attack cultivated vegetation 

 in sufficient numbers to be injurious. Here I would class the large sphinx caterpillars 

 of the grape, Everyx myron, (Cram.) and Philampelus achemon (Drury), and the tomato 

 worm, the clouded sulphur butterfly, and the common black and yellow swallow-tailed 

 butterflies. 



I will now refer briefly to some of the first-class pests which have given trouble dur- 

 ing the past year in Ontario. The two attacks, concerning which most enquiries have been 

 made, are cut-worms and grasshoppers. For the first of these, which have been remark- 

 ably abundant in all parts of Canada, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, several remedies 

 have been tried ; but it must be acknowledged that their attacks are extremely difficult 

 to meet, and although some of the methods suggested have been enthusiastically com- 

 mended by different experimenters, great caution must be exercised in giving the credit 

 to any remedy so far known, as being an unfailing check upon their injuries. In seasons 

 when they appear in only moderate numbers they are, of course, much more easily treated 

 than when, as in the past summer, they suddenly develope in countless myriads, and 

 remedies which are generally found satisfactory, then proved entirely inadequate. A cir- 

 cumstance which has sometimes been misleading to those not acquainted with the habits 

 of these insects is, that their attacks are seldom complained of until the caterpillars have 

 grown large, and are almost ready to turn to the chrysalis state. In several instances 

 which have come under my notice this has been the case, and by the time the farmer had 

 made up his mind to ask for assistance, had received advice, prepared and applied his 

 remedy, it was time for the caterpillars to disappear underground and turn to chrysalids. 

 The remedy, however, was applied, and the attack ceased, so the remedy suggested got 



