STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
439 
crush most of the worms, and complete the work by returning 
to the nest on a subsequent day and repeating this operation. 
Whichever of these methods is adopted, the work is in ail cases 
the most easily performed and the least disgusting, when the 
worms are young and small. It should therefore be done early 
in May, as soon as the white nests, appearing like cobwebs in the 
forks of the limbs, become sufficiently conspicuous to be readily 
seen. The worms of some nests will be out, feeding, at the same 
hours when others are resting within their tents. They are 
more universally in their webs in the morning than at any other 
time. But days during which there is a slight sprinkling rain 
are probably the best for this work, as the worms are then all 
in their nests, as a general rule, and are more torpid and less apt 
to crawl away; though the nests when wet are not so easily dis¬ 
covered. Often, too, when from the number of worms reposing 
in the nest we imagine the whole of the brood is there, a portion 
of them are in reality absent, engaged in feeding. Thus it fre¬ 
quently happens that when we suppose we have entirely exter¬ 
minated a nest, on returning to it a few days afterwards we are 
surprised to find it rebuilt and quite a number of worms inhab¬ 
iting it. In order therefore to entirely destroy these pests, it is 
necessary to go through the orchard repeatedly. And every 
owner of an orchard should make it a point to wage a war of 
extermination against these insects, annually. Not the fragment 
of a nest which is accessible should be allowed to remain. The 
rich green foliage in which the trees will be clad when released 
from this most common enemy, and the quantity and fairness of 
the fruit which they are then enabled to grow, will amply repay 
the care which is thus bestowed upon them. Within the circuit 
of my own observation I presume one-half the owners of 
orchards give no attention whatever to the caterpillars which 
yearly invade their trees. Most of them are men of such strict 
economy they think they cannot afford to spend their time in 
such trifling work as destroying these worms’ nests. Now it re¬ 
quires but a few moments, with a suitable ladder, to mount into 
a tree and with one hand covered with a buckskin mitten, crush 
every worm in the nest there. Ten of these nests can thus be 
destroyed with ease in an hour. Each of these nests contains 
