THE NATIONAL NURSERYMAN 
lO' 
GETTING READY FOR THE SPRING RUSH 
Half the nurseryman’s troubles would be removed if 
his shipping and planting season could be extended through 
the year instead of being crowded into a few weeks in the 
spring and a few in the fall, but this cannot be, so every¬ 
thing possible should be done in advance that will facilitate 
the work when the rush does come. 
In the office there are many ways of planning to get 
ahead on the work. It is useless to attempt to tell in detail 
what should be done because every office has its own peculiar 
system or lack of it, but it is safe to say few offices really 
work in advance to the extent it is possible. Late advertis¬ 
ing to a certain extent can be forecasted and put in such 
shape that little revision will be necessary. Form letters, 
paragraphs can be prepared and will be found to be great 
time-savers. A glance through a previous year’s corres¬ 
pondence will reveal the kind of inquiries that will likely 
be received and if form letters are prepared in advance the 
stenographer will be able to adapt them and make quota¬ 
tions, acknowledge orders without requiring a special letter 
to be dictated every time. Orders on hand can be written 
up and everything possible done in connection with them, 
so they will be ready to turn out when the time comes with¬ 
out detail information. 
Lost steps and waste movements are great efficiency 
killers and it is worth while to analyze these occasionally 
and see if some little scheme will not correct them. For 
instance, when the mail is being opened and read, separation 
according to future treatment should begin at once, into 
separate receptacles. Even in a one man office it dispenses 
with a great deal of handling of papers and lost motion. 
One nursery office where there were a great number of 
employees, adapted the ingenious scheme of using different 
colored folders to indicate orders, inquiries and complaints, 
so that the color indicated the routine for the particular 
piece of mail to which it was attached. 
On the nursery or in the packing sheds it is equally im¬ 
portant to use every means possible to bring efficiency up to 
the top notch. The season is so short the nurseryman 
often sacrifices his own planting so as to keep the orders 
moving. Of course on large nurseries where orders are 
filled from the storage houses and the digging and packing 
is done by entirely different gangs of men that do the plant¬ 
ing it is not such a problem, but a great many nurseries 
cannot maintain separate gangs and planting suffers accord¬ 
ingly. 
Efficiency in the packing shed consists of having boxes 
and packing material handy and in good shape. Stock if 
possible, labelled in advance. Heeling in grounds binns 
or whatever method is used well arranged and convenient. 
The principle of the manufacturers is a good one—the raw 
material to come in in one direction and the finished product 
to leave by the other. All movements in one direction. 
The simpler the processes the quicker will green help 
catch on and the greater will be the saving in energy and 
time. 
Nursery work is not mechanical but it should be made 
so whenever possible to give freer use of the mind to those 
tasks that actually need it. 
THE APPLE AND CHERRY ERMINE MOTHS 
The following is a summary of Bulletin No. 24 issued 
by the New York Agricultural Experiment Station. 
During recent years colonies of the caterpillars of the 
apple and cherry emiine moths have been discovered in 
considerable numbers in the State of New York. These 
insects were introduced in shipments of foreign nursery 
stock and appeared in plantations of im])ortcd ajjple and 
cherry seedlings. According to the records of the Division 
of Nursery Inspection infested plants have been found at 
Lockport, Hilton, Chili, Dansville, Rochester, Pcnfield, 
Newark, Orleans, Seneca and Geneva in western New 
York; at Johnstown and Schoharie in the Mohawk Valley 
region, and at Blauvelt, in the Hudson River Valley. 
From the material that has been collected two species 
of moths were bred—Y ponomeuta malinellus Zell., which 
thrives largely on apple, and Y. padellus L., which is a more 
general feeder, showing preference for hawthorn, plum 
and cherry. Both species are common and destructive 
fruit pests in Europe. 
The adult insects are small moths, with snowy white, 
black-dotted anterior wings. The hind wings are gray or 
leaden in color, with long fringes on lateral and posterior 
margins. The wing expanse is about 20 mm. The cater¬ 
pillars are quite variable in color, ranging from pale to gray¬ 
ish or greenish brown, and they average about 15 mm. in 
length. They have web-forming habits and live in a com¬ 
mon web, and in this they spin their cocoons. 
In the studies on the life history of these insects during 
the past four years the moths appeared during the first two 
weeks in July, and oviposition began about the middle of 
this month. The eggs are deposited in oval-shaped masses 
near a bud, usually of the current year’s terminal growth, 
and less frequently on the older wood. Hatching takes 
place in early autumn and the young larv® remain through 
the winter under the protecting crust of the eggshells. 
In the spring they assemble among the tender leaflets of 
an adjacent bud, which they attack. The older cater¬ 
pillars feed openly on the foliage under the protection of a 
thin, grayish web. With the need of more food they extend 
their webs, seizing and involving fresh leaves in a common 
nest. In severe attacks trees may be defoliated and com¬ 
pletely covered with the silken tents of the insects. Pupa¬ 
tion took place during the latter part of June and early 
July and the moths lived from the beginning of July to 
about the middle of August. 
^ These insects have, in their normal habitat, a large 
number of natural enemies, the most important of which 
belong to the orders Hymenoptera and Diptera. In spite 
of the large numbers of the moths’ eggs imported into the 
United States, the lepidopterons were apparently unac¬ 
companied by their more common and efficient parasites. 
An ichneumon, Mesochorus sp., was obtained from padellus 
reared on cherry, and a tachinid, Exorista arvicola Meigen, 
was quite abundant in some colonies of malinellus cater¬ 
pillars subsisting on apple. 
I Comparisons of the structures of the caterpillars and 
of the male genitalia show no tangible structural differences 
between padellus and malinellus. The absence of differential 
