Rensselaer Union, Volume 5, Number 36, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 May 1873 — The Canker Worm. [ARTICLE]

The Canker Worm.

The army or canker worm has made fearful havoc with our apple-trees the last few years, and baffled all our efforts to destroy it until the last year. We have now discovered a remedy, and it is not expensive considering the amount of wort it does. It requires perfect diligence to destroy it, and about four weeks’ time; then the work is done for years. I will first give you the habits of this worm, and then tell you how to get rid of it. It comes from the ground in the form of a miller, and about the size and shape of a barleycorn, quite white, the males with wings and the females without wings; had the females wings my remedy would not be of any use. I wish it to be understood that the miller comes out of ♦U n araunfl v r r>rv ont*! y in tho HUfinff » lIPfP. tlrC EiuUrla Vcl t Ittl *** uiv oyti tux , ■ with us about the first of April. I have known them earlier. They don’t wait for warm weather; in fact, just as soon as the ground is rid of frost they are around, and immediately go up the apple tree. The males fly up while the females crawl up, and lay their eggs somewhere on the tree, but where I do not know—am inclined to think it is somewhere about the buds, as there is where the worms first make their appearance about the time the leaves are the size of a man’s thumb-nail, and on the leaves, and are so small that it requires go<xl eyesight to see them. They - are good feeders, never ceasing to eat until their time is up, which here is about the last of June. They disappear very suddenly; indeed, in about two days it is all over. Their closing career is peculiarly interesting; they show signs of great distress While yet on the tree, jerking themselves about for a moment, and then spin down with a web to the ground, flapping all the way down, tumble awhile on the ground and then work their way into the ground until the next spring, when they appear as before and go over the same programme. Nothing but an apple tree will do them, and that they will devastate completely ; all the leaves and all the fruit must succumb, and I know of some orchards that have been killed by them. I have had hopes that some calamity would befall them, that they would winter kill, or the early frost would destroy the millers, but I found last spring there was no danger; freezing nights and snow storms had no effect upon them. I never knew one to freeze to death. I have seen them as lively as crickets when the thermometer was but little above zero. ~ Now for the remedy: Take wall paper that is out of style and can be got cheap; take a fine saw and saw the rolls in two m the center, so as to give a width of nine or ten inches of paper. If the tree is old or the bark rough, rub off some of the old bark, say half-way up to the limbs, and wrap around a strip of this paper and tie it with twine. The object of this paper is to make a smooth surface. Apply tar to this paper evety day about, the middle of the afternoon, for about four weeks, and you will catch all the female millers as they go to lay their eggs. This well done will save the orchard fbr a number of years. Begin early and do it thoroughly. —C. W. Palmer in Germantown Telegraph.