54 
is none the less valuable, and the attention of farmers and fruit growers 
should be drawn to the extreme ease with which a satisfactory spraying 
apparatus can be knocked together by any person with even a slight 
ability at handling tools. Such an apparatus is likely to be even more 
convenient and useful than the high-priced machines placed upon the 
market by manufacturers. 
SILK CULTURE IN HELENA. 
We notice that Governor Grey-Wilson, in a recent report to the Colo- 
nial Office, states that experiments are being carried on in the rearing 
and breeding of silkworms in the island of Saint Helena. The results 
so far obtained are said to have been very encouraging, and many thou- 
sands of mulberry trees have been set out. Rev. J. H. Daine, the resi- 
dent Roman Catholic chaplain, is taking a very lively interest in the 
attemx)t, and has imported eggs from the Cape of Good Hope and from 
France. 
THE HOEN FLY IN ALABAMA. 
The Mobile Register of June 10 devotes half a column to the subject 
of the sudden appearance of the Horn Fly in the northern portion of 
Mobile County, where stock raisers have invented a new popular name 
for it in " Hessian Fly," which the Register spells Hescli ian. The account 
gives the remedies which have been proposed by entomologists, and 
makes sundry misstatements, the most remarkable of which is, "froin 
a single dropping will often issue more than 500 new flies within a few 
hours." The Horn Fly develops rapidly, it is true, but those who are 
familiar with our published accounts will recognize that this statement 
is, to say the least, somewhat exaggerated. 
DAMAGE BY CHINCH BUGS. 
At the present writing (July 7) the season of 1893 appears to be 
a favorable one for Chinch Bugs. Reports of great damage have come 
to us from parts of Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas. In all these local- 
ities the injury has been aggravated by more or less severe drought. 
At two points diseased bugs from the State University at Lawrence, 
Kans., have been introduced, but, as we have been informed, without 
result, and we predict that the fungus and bacterial diseases will 
appear almost if not quite as soon in other localities. A change in 
the weather, with a wet spell, will induce the rapid appearance and 
propagation of both bacterial and fungus diseases. 
ECONOMIC IMPORTANCE OF CHALCOELA AURIFERA. 
Judge Lawrence C. Johnson sent us lately a wasp's nest which he 
had found, and called attention to the fact that its original builders had 
been ousted by a small Lepidopterous insect, which, upon examination, 
