[99] Report of the State Entomologist. 241 



Repeated experiments have failed to show any benefit from the use 

 of the above reputed remedy for insect attack on the foliage of fruit 

 or other trees. It seems to have been first announced sixty-six years 

 ago in the Memoirs of the [old] New York Board of Agriculture (vol. ii, 

 page 250, by George Webster, of Albany, who, after having bored 

 holes six inches deep in his infested trees, which he filled with sul- 

 phur and tightly plugged, found that all the caterpillars disappeared 

 within a day or two thereafter. Others who tried the experiment 

 had the same result. This was, perhaps naturally, ascribed to the 

 sulphur, when, in fact, the larvae had matured and left the trees 

 to find suitable places for pupation. 



Mr. Dodd, the latest propagator of the old remedy, claims that the 

 sap takes up the sulphur, carries it into the leaves and makes them 

 distasteful for food. This can not be true. Sulphur can not enter 

 into circulation, unless it be first dissolved, and we know that it is not 

 dissolvable by the sap of plants or trees. Mr. Isaac Wicks, of New 

 York, having placed a quantity in some peach trees as a remedy for 

 the yellows, on cutting up the trees five years thereafter, found it still 

 remaining in the cavities in its original condition (Practical Ento- 

 mologist, i, 1865, p. 125). 



Nor is there any reason to believe that if the sulphur could be car- 

 ried into the sap, the leaves would thereby become distasteful or 

 injurious to the caterpillars. Among the various articles experi- 

 mented with in France in search of some remedy against that terrible 

 scourge of the vineyards, Phylloxera, sulphur was tested, but without 

 any effect either upon the leaf or root insects, although these are 

 almost microscopic and exceedingly delicate creatures. 



Experiments made by Dr. Fitch prove conclusively that sulphur is 

 not injurious to the apple-tree tent-caterpillar. A limb of a wild 

 cherry tree having on it a nest of these caterpillars which were only 

 one-fourth of an inch long, was cut off and placed in a cup of sulphur 

 slightly moistened with water — a more severe test than if the 

 material had been inserted in the branch. A limb containing 

 another nest was placed beside it in a cup with water only. At 

 the end of nine days the caterpillars of the last-named nest 

 measured four-tenths of an inch long, while the others had 

 grown to double the size, measuring from 0.8 to 0.85 inch. The 

 experiment seemed to show that so far from the sulphur having 

 been injurious to them, it had rendered them more healthy and robust, 

 and accelerated their growth. (First and Second Reports on the Insects of 

 New York, 1856, p. 203.) 



31 ' 



