April, 1210 
W. Gitn,] 
~ 
Telegraph Poles “at the Stump” (21 years old), Bundaleer Forest. 
r 
[PHOTO 
Plant Bug Pests. 
(By Walter W. Froggatt.) 
During the last few months the most 
general, widespread, and injurious insect 
pests (after the pumpkin beetle) have 
been several species of plant bugs. 
While the order Hemiptera contains’ 
‘ome carnivorous bugs which destroy 
plant-eating insects, such as the very use- 
“ful vine-moth bug, there are among the 
plant-destroying species some of our most 
noxious insects, and these are very difficult 
to deal with in a satisfactory manner. 
They do not eat the surface of the bark or 
Aoliage, but, furnished with a sharp point- 
ed beak, they press it through the skin 
and draw up the sap beneath. It is there- 
fore no use spraying the foliage of the 
infested trees with any arsenical poison to 
kill them. Again, they appear, like the 
Rutherglen bug, in countless millions, are 
very active, covered with a stout shield- 
like covering on the back, and discharge 
an offensive fluid from the glanda of the 
body producing a “buggy” smell, which 
renders them distasteful to birds and 
other predaceous insects that otherwise 
might feed upon them. They are not 
only found on the exposed surface of the 
plants, but cluster under the foliage and 
often swarm upon the ground, sheltered 
under the growing plant . 
The most effective contact poison is 
kerosene emulsion, but it should’ be 
sprayed well under the plants as well as 
over them. If done early or ona dull 
day it will give the best results, as the 
bugs are then not so active as later on. 
When the plants are in rows, a shallow 
‘dish containing oi! and water can some- 
times be dragged up between the rows, 
and the bushes or plants beaten’ with 
brooms or branches so that the insects 
fall into the dish and are killed in the oil 
and water placed in the bottom. Smoke 
may also be used with advantage, parti- 
cularly on a small plot ina garden ; but 
the smoke only drives them away, and 
does not kill them. Clearing up and 
burning all the rubbish and grass round 
the crop, in which they often seek shelter 
before coming into the cultivated crop, 
and wherain they often deposit their eggs, 
will be a great help in fighting them. 
When fruit-trees are infested with 
them, a large shallow dish shonld be made 
out of a sheet of iron, with the edges 
turned up so that it will contain au inch 
or two of water with a skin of kerosene 
on the surface. Half a pint of kerosene 
will cover a large dish This dish, used 
like a hopperdozer, is dragged under the 
tree and each branch is jarred over it. 
Wrap a pickhandle or a stout stick with. 
a bit of bagging (so that the bark is not 
bruised), and use it as a club, tapping each. 
branch sharply. The jarring does not 
shake the more or less ripe fruit off, as 
shaking the branches would do. It is an 
unnatural shake to the insects, which are 
