18 79.] Mold as an Insect Destroyer. 683 
down, or fearfully lopped of their branches to abate the nuisance. 
They attacked the silver poplar in preference to all others, a tree 
singularly free from caterpillars heretofore. I found a small tree 
in my yard badly infested, and promised two smail boys one cent 
a nest for all they got down with not less than twenty-five in a 
brood, and burning them as they were brought me, paid them 
ninety-seven cents for their hour’s work. What was to be 
expected the next year but the total ruin of every shade tree; 
but my payment to the same boys was but forty cents, and the 
next year not one was to be found, and they have never returned 
to vex us. Continuous wet and cloudy weather may be sufficient 
to infect with fungus the food these caterpillars eat, but wherever 
we turn our eyes we find the provisions of nature ample to repress 
surplus life on this globe, and in no case more so than in our 
own species, where the half that survive infancy are winnowed 
out by sword, pestilence and famine, till but a corporal’s guard 
can be rallied at our allotted term of three score years and ten. 
The cases I have described are by internal poisoning ; I will add 
one where the poison fungus acted externally. My first attempt 
to carry through the winter that hybernating larva, the black 
bear (Expantherea), proved a total failure, as I put them away in 
the cellar where they were attacked and covered with mold, and 
though I washed and brushed them apparently clean, dried them 
in the sun and kept them out of doors the rest of the winter, 
they all died in the spring, refusing all food. Put away the next 
winter in leaves and brush, in the open air, I lost but one in ten. 
e, . : 
various insects that sport in the sun and enliven the face of nature. 
The bugs and the worms that annoy us can easily be kept in 
check as I have shown, by paid handpickers. 
VOL. XIIl.—wo, XI. 46 
