438 
ANNUAL REPORT OF NEW-YORK 
going to the press, to an extent never before known. Persons 
who have never seen these eggs upon their trees hitherto, now 
notice them frequently, notwithstanding the trees are in full 
leaf. And should the season prove favorable to them, and no 
artificial destruction be had recourse to, our orchards bid fair to 
be stripped of their foliage next year to an extent never before 
paralleled. 
But, as already stated, notwithstanding the most searching 
scrutiny, many of these clusters of eggs will escape notice, par¬ 
ticularly upon the higher limbs of the trees. The proprietor of 
an orchard, therefore, is often vexed, alter entirely ridding his 
trees of the eggs of these insects, as he supposes he has done, to 
find nests of caterpillars appearing upon them when the leaves 
are beginning to put forth. A second measure, the destruction 
of the caterpillars, therefore becomes necessary. And certainly 
the most expeditious and effectual method for accomplishing this 
is to crush them when they are gathered together and reposing 
in their nests. Practical orchardists are quite unanimous upon 
this subject, although in killing the w r orms there is some diver¬ 
sity in their practice. The best method is that stated by the 
late Willis Gaylord: “With a suitable ladder and a pair of 
stout mittens, if you are fastidious about using your hands, * 
* * when the worms are all in their web, at a single grasp 
every occupant may at once be destroyed.” (Trans. N. Y. State 
Agric. Soc., vol. iii, p. 153.) Those, however, who are at all 
squeamish in encountering work of this kind, which it must be 
confessed is more agreeable when done than when doing, prefer 
tearing the nest from the tree and trampling its contents into the 
earth beneath the sole of the boot. By thrusting a stick or pole 
through the nest as low down in the fork of the limbs as possible, 
and then raising it outwards, nearly the entire nest and its occu¬ 
pants can be removed from the tree, when there are no small late¬ 
ral limbs growing within the fork to catch and retain portions of it. 
Others thrust into the nest a cylindrical brush constructed by 
the manufacturers for this purpose, or the top of a dry mullen 
stalk, attached to a pole for those nests which are high up in the 
tree, and turning it about in such a manner as to wind the nest 
around it, by pressing* and rubbing it against the limbs, hereby 
