Evening star., 1905-10-16
A New Pest,
To the Editor of Tho s,,,.

=" INK H>oiior OF The Star:
Ihe shade trees of Washington nou, how.
a new and deadly enemy that is sucking tho
me sap or the trees through the bark of
the body and branches
'or years the elm trees have heen tho
prey 10 the elm beetle, that eats the COW
efHis from the leaves and by midsummer
MANY OF the leaves are dry and dead and
SOON drop OF, but the next spring the tree
pats out new set of leaves and looks as
Iresh and green as ever, SO that the life of
me tree Is not endangered by the work of
this small insect
ne tent Caterpillar nearly every year eats
all the leaves from some of the fine lin
dens along our streets and Inv tba n,iddIo idri
or last or August these grand shade treeS
nave only the bare leaf skeletons baneino
on their boughs and look badly indeed hut
IN spring they put forth a new erean GOV,
ering and look as new and fresh as ever
ana though these yearly attacks on the
!eaFes do retard the growth and serionsIv
impair the beauty of these fine shade trees
they do not seriously threa ten the life al
the trees. t ~
so far as l have ever learned there ha 6
never been a real enemy to the life or
beauty OF the plane trees, or sycamores
that have been extensively planted and
had congratulated myself that sycamores
had been planted on 18th street east. where
l live, but this summer when l returned
from vacation the middle of August 1 dis
covered colony of gray bugs about a
quarter Of an inch long and very plumu
and fat clustered close together on the
bark of one of the limbs of the tree In front
OF our house. They were about the color
or the bark of the tree and there must have
been two hundred of them. Beneath them
on the walk was a wet stain that looked
brown and sticky. From their actions they
seemed to bore into the new bark and suck
the sap from the tree. I burned them OF
with a cloth attached to a stick and sat
urated with kerosene, but when killed by
the heat, though they let go with their
feet they still hung dangling from the bark
by their bills.
Recently these colonies have increased to
hundreds and thousands all the syca-
mores l have inspected
Yesterday morning. l burned thousands
of them and this morning l saw thousands
more on the row of trees along the east side
of 18th, street east. along by Lincoln
Park, and the grand old sycamore "Planus
orientalis" In the center of Lincoln Park is
the home OF myriads of these gray colonies
that are sucking the life from the tree.
The trees along Indiana and Louisiana
avenues have been attacked and any one
going to the District building or court
house, if he will glance up, will see thou
sands of these bugs clustered on the limbs
and near the body of the trees. and their
presence is easily shown by the wet stains
on the walk beneath
They look to me like the young of the
fiat. ill-smelling squash bug" or "currant
bug" often seen and smelled on fruit. such
as raspberries and blackberries.
l am not sure that this Is correct, but l
have seen a number of the grown insects
with the colonies.
So far l have seen nothing in regard
to this pest in the papers nor in the pubi-
cations of the Agricultural Department nor
have the District authorities taken any ac-
ton to destroy these enemies o, our trees.
1t seems as II some real serious action
should be taken by those in charge of the
shade trees to destroy these pests before
they get beyond control.
The attention of the department of bug
ology'' should enlighten US as to the best
means of getting rid of them AS they
now are in clusters on the bark man
with an oil torch on pole could destroy
at least estimate one million day, and II
would surely be worth mans wages to
be rid of so many.
This is no exaggeration, as any one with
good ewes can soon discover, IL he will take
the trouble to examine the trees that /
have mentioned. Nj. T.. SABlN.