12 BULLETIN NO. 4, DIVISION OF ENTOMOLOGY. 



Brakeley, well as he knew the enemy, was caught napping ; on one bog- 

 he noticed the larvae, but apparently not in force or doing any damage ; 

 busy with other bogs, he saw this, three days after, almost entirely eaten 

 up. Senator Emsen, on a Saturday, noticed the larvae on a 40-aere 

 bog ; he decided to attend to them in a few days, but three or four days 

 thereafter the larvae had destroyed the entire bog and were beyond 

 being attended to. 



The larvae, when full grown, do not pupate in their habitations, but 

 drop to the ground and spin up in any rubbish at hand. The end of July 

 and the beginning of August bring the second brood of moths, and 

 until the middle of September they can be found on the bogs. By that 

 time the eggs are all laid, the last straggler disappears, and the vines 

 begin to recover; and by the end of September, except for the absence 

 of berries, there is little to show the amount of damage suffered by the 

 bog. But the new crop is provided for; everywhere upon the leaves 

 are the small yellow eggs, innocent enough in appearance, but these 

 •quietly maintain their vitality throughout the winter, under water, 

 ready to awaken to life and mischief in the early spring. During the 

 past season this insect has been unusually plentiful ; everywhere on all 

 the bogs visited by me they had done damage, some places more, some 

 places less. They usually appear in one spot in a bog in small num- 

 bers— a stray moth or two having found their way to it — attract no par- 

 ticular attention until suddenly their progeny will devour the entire bog 

 year after year. Occasionally they disappear as suddenly as they ap- 

 pear. One bog not far from Cotuit had never yielded a crop ; year after 

 year this insect had destroyed it, until the owner had almost despaired. 

 This season he had made the most extensive arrangements to fight 

 it — was prepared at all points to do battle, and calmly awaited its 

 coming — but in vain ; scarcely a larva was to be found on the entire 

 bog, and on August 9, when I saw it, the vines were full of berries 

 and everything pointed to a large crop. 



REMEDIES. 



An insect so destructive as this has, of course, been the subject ot 

 many experiments looking to its destruction, but they have been usually 

 unsuccessful in the main end in view, viz., saving the crop, and this not 

 because of any fault of the remedy, but simply because it was not applied 

 at the right time. I made experiments with several insecticides, and 

 ascertained what had been used by others, and was in most cases able to 

 discover the cause of failure. The remedy recommended by Packard, 

 and after him by Mrs. Treat and Mr. Saunders, is flowing the bog and let- 

 ting it remain under water for two or three days. Unfortunately the 

 vast majority of bogs require a week or more to flow them and half that 

 .time to ran dry again, while many bogs could not bellowed at all in the 

 summer. Nor could a bog be safely flowed at any time after the buds 

 had formed and the blossoms had appeared ; the result would be a de- 



