CHAPTER XIII. 
MACHINERY AND DEVICES FOR THE DESTRUCTION OF 
THE WORM — Concluded. 
VII. — INSECT MANIPULATORS AND MECHANICAL TREATMENT. 
DISLODGING, CRUSHING, OR STIFLING THE WORMS AND CHRYSALIDS. 
The practice of sweeping off or knocking or jarring off the worms, 
pupae, or moths is related to that of taking them by picking (already 
considered in Chapter XI), and at the proper times may have some 
similar value. One difference is that in this method insects are gen- 
erally manipulated by a tool or machine, though sometimes they are 
knocked off by the hand or foot. Various sweeping and beating de- 
vices are available, yet usually not commendable. Sticks, bats, bunches 
of branches, brooms or long brushes, &c, naturally suggest themselves. 
But these arrangements are applicable only with such force as to be not 
suitable, and the machines embodying them, in so far as they have been 
effective against the insects, prove also objectionably damaging to the 
bolls, &c. 
The machines for manipulating plants, to remove insects from them, 
may be thrown into two categories : (1) frictional drags, as brushes, 
scrapers, &c, and (2) beaters of the plants, as clubs, flappers, &c. Though 
some of these have not been tried, it is doubtful if any of them will 
prove advisable for use upon the cotton crop. The best possibilities 
that I can suggest are, for (1) the use of a large long fringe of light 
ropes or other suitable materials, to be dragged along the row so that 
the ropes or equivalent elements fall into the plants, down among the 
branches and leaves, thoroughly to strike and wipe the surfaces of all 
the leaves and branches and create thus such friction and disturbance 
as to dislodge the worms. The elements in question should be nu- 
merous and hang in contact with each other, but not heavy or rough 
enough to break or scrape the plaift or pull or knock off its bolls. Upon 
this plan I made a device of soft materials also intended to be kept wet 
with poison and thus wipe it off onto the leaves and branches. It con- 
sisted of a group of long cylindrical, slender, sausage-shaped stalled 
bags, each being 1 or 2 inches in diameter. Bristles of animal or vege- 
table or fine metal iiber held in the twist of ropes thus used add much 
to their efficiency in removing anything from the foliage of the plants. 
The greatest possibility that I can propose for (2) is iu the use of very 
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