Ill 
The Fall Web-worms, Hyphaniria textor, Harris, are perhaps harder 
i0 combat because of the extreme height of the trees which they 
nfest. In the Springdale cemetery, a place of over two hundred 
icres, situated just out of Peoria city, the webs were unusally numer- 
)us and upon nearly all varieties of forest trees, as the hickory, ash, 
^ak, black walnut, black cherry, as also upon the fruit trees, apple and 
pear. This insect is generally considered single-brooded, although it 
is possible in some latitudes they are double. Perhaps the cheapest 
and most effectual manner of destroying these insects is by means of 
the lighted torch or burning a whisp of straw directly under the web 
containing the insects. They can be destroyed any time during the 
dav, since the habit of the insect is to enlarge the web and thus en- 
slose its food and not leave the same in a body during intervals in 
search of food, as do the Clisiocampa Americana. 
The Strawberry-worm — Empyrtus maculatus —Norton. 
During the latter part of April and first of May I received 
letters with specimens from Mr. 0. B. Galusha, of Morris, Ill., 
in reference to a small green worm destroying the strawberry vines. 
May 22d I visited his place and found the vines to be of the Wilson 
variety, the leaves and blossoms so badly eaten as to destroy all pros¬ 
pects of a crop of berries. He had plowed up one part of the patch, 
and in another some half mile distant had allowed poultry the free¬ 
dom of the vines, which readily devoured the worms. 
The insect proved to be the larva of Empyrtus maculatus , first de¬ 
scribed by Mr. Riley in the Prairie Farmer under date of May 25,1867 ; 
the same has since been rewritten in various reports. The species 
appears to have a wide range, since it is reported from various sections 
in the East and from Ontario, as also from the States of Illinois, Mis¬ 
souri and Iowa. I have met it through Northern Illinois during the 
past two seasons, and scarcely a patch of vines are entirely free from a 
limited number, even though no serious effects have been produced 
and their presence hitherto unsuspected. 
In Mr. Riley’s 9th Missouri report, page 27, is found a short history 
of the insect from which I will draw that others may be enabled to 
recognize the enemy who may not chance to possess this valuable 
work. “Early in spring numerous flies may be seen hanging to and 
flying about the vines in fields which have been previously infested. 
They are dull and inactive in the cool of the morning and evening, 
and at these hours are seldom noticed. They are of a pitchy black 
color, with two rows of large, transverse, dull, whitish spots upon the 
abdomen. The female, with the saw-like instrument peculiar to the 
insects of this family, deposits her eggs by a most curious and inte- 
resting process, in the stems of the plants, clinging the while to the 
hairy substance by which these stems are covered. 
The eggs are white, opaque, 0.03 of an inch long, and may be read¬ 
ily perceived upon splitting the stalks, though the outside orifice at 
which they were introduced is scarcely visible. They soon increase 
somewhat in bulk, causing a swelling of the stalk, and hatch in two 
weeks, more or less, according to the temperature, and during the 
