84 
House cS* 
Garden 
Many a beautiful inter¬ 
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lighting equipment. Old 
fixtures may easily be re¬ 
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charafter and beauty to any 
interior. Our Planning 
Serv'ice makes it easy to 
choose exaftly the right fit¬ 
ments for your require¬ 
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name of dealer and copy 
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let, sent on request. 
The Edward N. Riddle Co. 
28S Riddle Building 
Toledo, Ohio 
HARSH TREATMENT for TREE PESTS 
{Continued from page 82) 
maples are dangerous and inadvisable. 
The rapidly growing soft maple is a 
favorite of the cottony maple scale, an 
insect which frequently produces on the 
underside of the smaller branches fes¬ 
toons of cottony matter projecting from 
frequently closely placed, oval, brown 
scales about in diameter. The 
minute, yellowish young crawl in im- 
m.ense numbers the latter part of July 
and may be destroyed by thorough 
spraying with a tobacco soap prepara¬ 
tion, though on soft maples an early 
spring application of an oil emulsion, 
1 to IS parts of water has given excel¬ 
lent results. This cottony maple scale 
also occurs on sugar maples and a num¬ 
ber of other trees, though usually in 
much smaller numbers. 
The soft maple is a favorite of the 
leopard moth. Badly infested trees are 
easily recognized by the numerous brok¬ 
en branches usually less than 2" in di¬ 
ameter. In serious infestations, trees may 
be headed back very generally by the 
work of this borer. 
Systematically cutting infested twigs 
in late summer and early fall and burn¬ 
ing them at once, otherwise the borers 
may escape from the twigs, is one of 
the more satisfactory control measures. 
The larger borers may be destroyed in 
their burrows with a bent wire or by 
injecting bisulphide of carbon. All 
badly infested limbs should be removed 
or at least the worst of the affected 
wood cut out. 
The Norway maple is remarkably 
free from insect troubles. The most 
serious enemy is a plant louse which 
occasionally becomes excessively abun¬ 
dant and in conjunction with dry 
weather in early summer may be re¬ 
sponsible for a very heavy leaf drop. 
OccasionaOy, this pest becomes so nu¬ 
merous as to deform the leaves early in 
the season and produce a very unsightly 
condition which may be accentuated 
by the sooty fungus developiifg in the 
copious honeydew. Early and thorough 
spraying of the undersurface of the 
leaves with a tobacco soap preparation 
is the most satisfactory control measure. 
It not infrequently happens that natu¬ 
ral enemies, such as lady beetles and 
their ugly, black spined grubs and the 
vari-colored maggots of flower flies, de¬ 
stroy most of the aphids before serious 
injury develops, though it is unsafe to 
depend upon these natural agents. 
POES OF THE HORSE CECESTSTUT 
The horse chestnut is one of the fa¬ 
vorites of tlie black, yellow-marked, con¬ 
spicuously tufted tussock moth cater¬ 
pillars which also feed upon a number 
of other trees, particularly linden, elm 
and maple in about the order named. 
It is a pest of city and village trees. 
The tussock moth passes the winter in 
conspicuous, white egg masses about J4" 
in diameter attached to filmy cocoons 
usually spun upon the larger limbs and 
the bark of the trees. It is compara¬ 
tively easy to remov^e these before the 
caterpillar’s hatch in early spring and 
thus prevent any possibility of injury', 
since the grub-lOce females are wingless 
and infestation from other trees must 
depend largely upon the crawiing of 
caterpillars. This latter can be pre¬ 
vented by the use of sticky bands, such 
as tree tanglefoot, on the trunks or by 
tying near the middle a broad strip of 
cotton batting around the trunk and 
then turning the upper portion down 
over the string, thus providing a very 
effectual barrier to crawling caterpillars. 
Early spring applications of arsenate of 
lead are also very effective. There is no 
reason why this pest should be allowed 
to cause more than very nominal 
damage. 
The ornamental white birches are 
seriously injured by the bronze birch 
borer, the slender, white grubs of which 
excavate numerous, sinuous galleries in 
the cambium layer and thus girdle 
branches or even entire trees. Birches 
are usually attacked near the top and 
as the galleries girdle the smaller 
branches, there is first a thinning of the 
foliage and later the death of the limb. 
Occasionally the entire trunk is badly 
infested at the outset and the entire 
tree dies. Weak tops or sickly trees 
should be carefully examined and all 
affected parts cut and burned in order 
to prevent the insects spreading to other 
trees. There are reasons for thinking 
that spraying the foliage of the birch 
and adjacent elms or other trees with 
poison early in May would destroy 
many of the pests before they had an 
opportunity to deposit eggs. 
TULIP TREES AXD POPLARS 
The tulip tree, like the Norway maple, 
is unusually free from insect attack. 
It is frequently infested with a large, 
brown scale insect nearly in di¬ 
ameter. The insect occasionally becomes 
so abundant as fairly to incrust the 
underside of the limbs in mid-summer, 
at which time badly infested branches 
have a distinctly disagreeable acid odor. 
Application of lime sulphur wash at 
winter strength just after the leaves 
fall has been advised, and is fairly effec¬ 
tive and probably preferable to early 
spring treatment with a miscible oil, 
since there is some danger of injuring 
tlie trees with this latter material. 
The Carolina and Lombardy poplars 
are very liable to be attacked by the 
recently introduced mottled willow 
borer, the grubs of which may be found 
in shallow burrows frequently overlaid 
w'ith brown, shrunken bark. The beetles 
appear in mid-summer and deposit their 
eggs in small punctures in the bark. A 
considerable degree of protection may 
be secured by spraying the foliage with 
poison the last two weeks in July. It 
is also possible to destroy many of the 
hibernating grubs by applying a car- 
bohneum emulsion in December or 
April, the latter probably being the safer. 
The poplar borer, a grayish, yellow¬ 
ish-marked beetle about long in¬ 
fests various poplars and occasionally 
is quite injurious to ornamentals. The 
nearly full grown borers excavate large 
shallow galleries in the sapwood and 
frequently produce quantities of coarse, 
excelsior-like borings which collect at 
the base of badly infested trees. Paint¬ 
ing the egg scars on the bark in Octo¬ 
ber with carbolineum or creosote kills 
the young borers. The older ones may 
be dug out with a wire or destroyed 
by injecting carbon bisulphide. Badly 
infested trees should be cut and burned 
or dried quickly, since they may con¬ 
tain many borers and prove a constant 
source of infestation for other poplars. 
Some of the more important insects 
injuring shade trees have been discussed 
above and directions given for control¬ 
ling these pests. Unfortunately trees 
are large and spra>-ing out of the ques¬ 
tion for many individuals. This treat¬ 
ment, however, is not excessively costly 
and all that is necessary is an apprecia¬ 
tion of the situation and the utiliza¬ 
tion of some method for bringing about 
the desired results. Some of the more 
progressive cities of 10,000 inhabitants 
or more have learned that it is entirely 
feasible to provdde for the systematic 
{Continued on page 86) 
