The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1911-03-24

badly infested section at the time of
 their emergence, in July. The ability of the females to fly makes it difficult to exterminate an isolated colony. In the time of storms, sometimes, the moths are carried to a new territory a long distance away and there propa- gate. Many are destroyed in the globes
 of the arc lights.
 Each female deposits from 200 to 400 eggs, which are laid in oval clust- CTS and on the under side of a leaf.
 The first three weeks in July is the
 time in which the eggs are laid and
 the masses are reddish brown. The eggs are spherical and yellow. They incubate in from fifteen to twenty days. Matching late in July or August
 the young caterpillars feed first upon the leaf upon which the eggs were l laid, but later the other leaves fur | nish food for them. September sees a
 number of leaves drawn together and | fastened and lined with the spun silk 1 of the insects, making a nest in which 1 the larvae spend the winter, a hundred | or more living in one nest.
 | Spring sees the larvae emerge and 1 they feed upon the first leaves that | appear. They continue to grow and
 grow, and moult four or five times. until they reach the adult stage, when they are about an inch and a half long. The cocoons are spun about
 June 20. The caterpillar is dark
 brown in color, with light brown hairs, On each side, so that it shows both
 dorsally and laterally, there Is row of white tufts, one on each segment, and appearing as an interrupted white band when seen from above. On each of the ninth and tenth segments there i is a small red tubercle bearing hairs. l The cocoon Is made of folded leaves, | in the crevices of bark or other shell tered place. The pupae are commonly 1 found in masses more or less loosely i held together. by the silken webs and hairs from the caterpillar. This stage lasts about twenty days, depending | upon the conditions of the weather. ] Nine months are required before the eggs of the gypsy moth are matched, and this is the longest period of any stage in the insects existence, but 1 with the brown-tail moth the egg state l lasts only about three weeks and it is
 at this time that the important work of control must be done From the l first of August until the latter part of the following June the caterpillars oc- cur on the trees.
 Two measures of control are prin- cipally used; destroying the nests and spraying the foliage with poison to
 kill the caterpillars. Scouting for nests should be done in winter when the trees are bare. with some kind of a long pruner. The nests, nearly always at the extreme end of the twigs can
 be readily seen when the trees are shorn of their foliage As they are clipped from the trees they should be burned, for if left upon the ground the insects will hatch and crawl up the trees and the work of seeking their exterm'nation will be negatived Empusa aulicae. a fungus growth, is the natural enemy of the brown-tail moth, which in certain moist seasons, destroys many of the pests, which may
 be found dead on the trunks of trees.
 and on the stones and walls of build ings. Sometimes large numbers of
 them are found dead in their nests.
 It is hoped to control this scourge
 of the fruit and shade trees of the
 state by a number of it's native insect enemies and parasites, besides several
 imported ones which are known to exist.