Evening Republican, Volume 15, Number 222, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 September 1911 — ELECTRICITY TO KILL PESTS [ARTICLE]

ELECTRICITY TO KILL PESTS

Washington Man Demonstrates Value of New .Method of Exterminating Many injurious’ Insects. Spokane. Wasji.— Electricity as & agency to destroy the codling moth and other bug pests is the latest innovation introduced tn modern, apple orcharding In the Spokane valley, where W. M. Frost of Opportunity, Wash., and J. C. Lawrence, a grower of Spokane, the other night gave what la declared to have been the first demonstration of its kind in the warid. The test was made in a six-year-old orchard, and more than a score of sec-ond-brood moths and many green aphis were killed in a few moments. The apparatus consists of a storage battery to charge the incandescent light globes, each of six candle power, which are netted with fine steel wire, coated with copper and tin. alternately. Attracted by the bright lights in

the-trees, to which the globes are carried at the ends of a covered wire, the moths fly against the netting, complete the electrio circuit and are instantly killed, the bodies falling into a receptacle placed beneath the globe. Mr. Frost estimates that one battery to an acre of trees will keep the moths under control, thus eliminating the usual spraying and saving many dollars annually for help, equipment and fluid. He is now preparing to wire his orchard of ten acres, containing 700 trees, and several neighbors who witnessed the initial test are doing likewise. It la reported that several thousand acres of bearing apple trees will be equipped with exterminators by next spring. If commercial electric light wires are extended to the orchard tracts, as they are in many of the valleys in Washington, Idaho, Oregon and Montana. the expense of batteries may be

saved by making direct connection. The coat of covering the globes with wire nets la a small Item, and, any electrician can do the work.