Evening Republican, Volume 17, Number 242, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 October 1913 — MOTH TRAIL A MYTH [ARTICLE]

MOTH TRAIL A MYTH

Girl Sends Bureau of Entomology Experts on Foql Chase. Scientists of the Government Aim to Stop the Destruction of Country's * Pear Trees—Pest Sought to Eat Pest. Washington, D. C. —Her name is Mary. She wrote a nice litjle note from Haverford, Pa., to the bureau of entomology at the department of agriculture. “I enclose three funny moths I caught the other day,” wrote Mary. "Will, you kindly tell me what thfey are?” Whereupon the bureau of entomology rose from its several chairs and began to move in circles. Mary had found the brQWsi tail moth in Penq sylvania, wherrthe brown tail nevej had been heard of before. A browr, tail moth is as destructive to elm trees as a forest fire. No one knows how many millions of dollars have been spent in fighting It.

"Go!” said the centurions of the bureau. “Beat it to Pennsylvania and find out all about thio dreadful thing.”

A squad of entomologists appeared in Haverford next morning. Other bug connoisseurs heard the news and they went to Haverford. For a week young men stumbled through its streets, their eyes fixed on the tops of trees. The pockets of the young men bulged with butterfly nets and poison bottles. They hunted, but could find no moths. At last they looked up Mary. “Quick!” they gasped. “Tell us where you caught the brown tail months.” “Oh,” said Mary, “I brought them home with me from Maine.” .J / The bureau of entomology is adding to our stock of bug lore every day. Lately it discovered that the ultraviolet rays are powerless against the bacteria which inhabit milk. Every one knows that X-rays have a deadly effect upon the human body if they are applied too often. But the cigarette worm—which lives in made up tobacco —not only is impregnable to the X-rays, but it actually seems to flourish in proportion to the amount of X-rays it gets. Just to prove that the pear tree blight is caused by an animal organism. the scientists are raising this bacteria in bottles. By and by they will raise in the laboratory anothur pest to eat this pest up. They did that with the alfalfa weevil. They imported some sort of a bug which for lack of more intelligible name was called the alfalfa weevil-weevil. Anyhow, ft is a weevil which feeds on the weevil which feeds on alfalfa. It is saving this valuable crop in some parts of the west The oddity of the moment, however, is the sick nurse of the hairy vetch. Vetch is a valuable forage plant, but it isn’t a hustler. When it finds a soil that is deficient in nitrogen it just lies down and dies.

Whereupon the entomologists take a bottle of bugs out to the vetch field and turn them loose.—These bugs have just one idea in life, apparently. They hurry tb the roots of the vetch and begin to feed it the nitrogen it lacks. Conversation about frogs is not encouraged in the bureau of animal his-, tory. Not long ago one of its brightest young men became enthusiastic over batarachians. He wouldn’t talk about anything else. He slipped lively green frogs into the hands of those he liked and was invariably shocked and Irritated by the effect He spent his spare hours in catching frogs or studying frogs or talking about frogs. So they put him under the judicial bell glass. “This man isn’t crazy,” said the judge, after the frog connoisseur had concluded his defense. “He is a great scientist. But I think that some of his accusers are suffering from echoes in the garret”