A Member: I noticed what seemed to be the same insect on the grape vines.
Dr. Morris: I would call attention to one pest that is very destructive to hazels; unless watched closely it will produce serious injury. That is the larvae of two of the sawflies. Dr. Britton was unable to determine off-hand the species of the specimens I sent him, but you may know the sawfly larvae by their habit of collecting in a row like soldiers around the edge of the leaf and when the branch is disturbed, their heads and tails stand up. These sawfly larvae need looking after and can be killed by spraying. They usually collect on two or three leaves at a time.
I would like to ask about a bud worm that attacks the leaf of the hickory near the axil, sometimes very extensively, but not very injuriously. At the same time it makes deformities. Colonies of this insect select certain trees, for instance, the Taylor tree that you saw yesterday is infected with this particular bud larva. The base of a petiole becomes enlarged two or three times, and you will find one white worm at the bottom. This colony is confined to this one tree, and the very next tree adjoining the Taylor has its branches interwining, but is not bothered at all, so far as I can determine.
This colony habit is also true of the hickory nut weevil—the hickory weevil makes the Taylor tree a colony house, whereas I haven't found a single weevil in nuts of the adjoining hickory tree that has its branches interwining.
That colony habit is, perhaps, a weak point with the weevil, and it may enable us to eradicate them by concentrating our attention upon their colony trees.
One point in regard to the chestnut weevil. When our chestnuts began to die here, I supposed that the chestnut weevils would immediately turn to my chinquapins for comfort. Weevils attack the chinquapins so extensively in the South that Mr. Littlepage said chinquapins would not be acceptable to Dr. Kellogg because they furnished so much animal diet. (Laughter). Curiously enough, the chestnut weevils did not go to my chinquapins. These chinquapins bear full crops, heavy crops, and one will almost never find a chestnut weevil in the nuts. I have found now and then a little weevil, about half a dozen altogether, that attacks the involucre at its point of attachment to the chinquapin. This looks like the chestnut weevil, but perhaps, only according to my eye, very much as all Chinamen look alike to one who has never seen them before.
The matter of carbon disulphide for the painted hickory borer. I have used that apparently successfully, but I didn't tunnel through six feet of hickory tree afterward to see whether the borers were dead or not. It is a successful treatment for apple borers. I have no trouble with the apple borers now. I simply clean off the entrance of the hole, the "sawdust," and then with a little putty spread out with my hand make a sort of putty shelf below the hole, then I squirt in a few drops of carbon disulphide with a syringe, turn up the putty and leave it adhering to the bark, closing the hole. You can do that very quickly, and it spares a good deal of perspiring and backache.
The black walnut. On one of my black walnut trees there is a serious pest, a very little worm which infests the involucre. The black walnuts of this tree fall early. I found that same worm last year also extending to the Asiatic walnuts, so that a great many Japanese walnuts fell early as the black walnuts fall, as a result of this little worm's working in large numbers within the involucre. I sent some specimens to New Haven for the species to be observed. This will be a very serious matter if it is going to involve the English walnuts as it does on Long Island. I have found the same thing, apparently, on Long Island in the black walnut, in the English walnut, and in the pecan. It causes a serious drop of these nuts at Dana's Island, near Glen Cove, Long Island.