Packard.] THE population op an APPLE TREE. 175 
and cut off the brood. The eggs have so thick a shell 
that it seems impossible that even great* extremes of tem¬ 
perature should destroy them. They are laid in broad 
patches of from sixty to a hundred or more, standing up 
side by side. They are glued together and to the bark or 
paling by a grayish varnish, secreted by a gland in the end 
of the body. 
In dealing with this caterpillar the obvious preventive 
measure is to keep the females from ascending the trunks 
of the trees and laying their eggs on the branches. This is 
done in a cheap and efficacious way by surrounding the 
trunk of the tree with a band of tarred paper and anointing 
it with printer’s ink. If the ink is daily applied this is a 
cheap and sure preventive. Another pne, involving more 
expense but less time and trouble, is to surround the base 
of the trunk with a wooden trough kept filled with oil or 
ink ; or it may be raised and made of zinc, and filled with 
whale oil. But all these methods are useless unless the 
shiftless and careless are compelled to cooperate with those 
who take pains to keep their trees free from the caterpillars. 
We have ventured to suggest, in our first “Report on the 
Injurious' and Beneficial Insects of Massachusetts,” that it 
is only by combination between farmers and orchardists that 
these and other pests can be kept under. As we then said, 
“The matter can be best reached by legislation; we have 
fish and game laws, whjr should we not frame a law provid¬ 
ing that farmers, and all those owning a garden or orchard, 
should cooperate in taking preventive measures against inju¬ 
rious insects, such as early or late planting of cereals to 
avert the attacks of the Wheat midge and Hessian fly, the 
burning of stubble in the autumn and spring to destroy 
the joint worm, the combined use of proper remedies against 
the canker worm, the various cut worms, and other noxious 
caterpillars. A law carried out by a proper state entomo¬ 
logical constabulary, if it may be so designated, could com- 
15 
