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| Boy and bicycle. |
Cortland Evening Standard, Friday, June 9, 1899.
RECOVERED A STOLEN WHEEL.
Little Joe Smith, the son of Joseph M. Smith, the tailor, who lives at 12 Madison-st., Cortland, lost his bicycle in a peculiar and surprising manner one day recently. He had started from his home for school and as he turned from Madison-st., to Main-st., a man in a lumber wagon came along. Leaping out of the wagon the stranger lifted Joe from his wheel and putting the wheel in his wagon drove away at a rapid gait, leaving the lad in a bewildered condition at the sudden performance.
A young man, who was riding in the vicinity at the time, saw the transaction. He started in pursuit of the stranger and overtaking him demanded the wheel which was surrendered without much protest. The young man left the wheel at the [boy's] house but did not leave his name.
BUT IT WAS LOADED.
Boy Didn't Know it and Caught the Bullet in His Hand.
Another case of "didn't know it was loaded." Adelbert Greene, aged 15 years, held up his left hand late yesterday afternoon for his older brother to shoot at with one of those revolvers that was "not loaded." The revolver was a 22-calibre which the elder Greene had traded for somewhere up near Summerhill, and was showing to his brother. The accident occurred at the home of the boys, 119 North Main-st., where resides their widowed mother, and they had whirled the cylinder around several days snapping the hammer frequently, but this particular time the hammer hit a load. The bullet passed through the fleshy part of the thumb and lodged in the palm of the hand. The boy walked to the office of Dr. Santee, who removed the ball and dressed the injuries.
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| Dr. Lydia A. Strowbridge. |
ALL WERE RE-ELECTED.
Universalists Well Satisfied With Last Year's Officers.
At the closing session of the Cayuga association in the Universalist church yesterday the officers of last year were all re-elected. They are as follows:
Chairman—Albert H. Goodrich, Auburn.
Treasurer—Dr. Lydia A. Strowbridge, Cortland.
Clerk—Nelson Ritter, Syracuse.
Rev. U. S. Milburn, pastor of the Cortland church, discussed the topic, "Is This an Age of Materialism?" and Rev. A. B. Curtis of Binghamton spoke of "The Silence of God." The meeting closed with general remarks and suggestions for the future and talks on "What Have I Gained by This Meeting?"
PAGE TWO—EDITORIALS.
The police of two great American cities are simultaneously under official examination, and it has been discovered in both cases that an entirely new order of vision has been developed by them, which makes the discovery of color blindness a very small affair indeed. It has been found in Chicago and in New York that a police captain, with 400 poolrooms and gambling dens put squarely before his face, could not see them, and this optical defect reached even the commissioners who, when the poolrooms were pointed out to them, doubted their existence and conscientiously denied the evidence of their own senses. Here is a new physiologic mystery worthy the attention of science. What is the effect of police duty on the eyesight? How long after appointment does a policeman retain the use of his senses? And does he, if employed long enough, lose the power of recognition entirely? "As blind as a policeman" may yet become an adage illustrating one of the discoveries of the age.
In Police Court.
Sheriff Brainard went to Weedsport Wednesday and arrested Chas. Mosler, Jr. on a warrant sworn out by Melvin Reed of Cortland, charging him with petit larceny in stealing a single harness in December, 1898. Mosier pleaded not guilty and the case was adjourned to June 14. In default of bail, Mosier was committed to jail.
Wm. Davy, a 16 year old lad, arrested on complaint of Alfred Wright, charged with maliciously and unlawfully injuring a canoe, was discharged, he having settled the matter in a amicable way with the complainant.
Wm. Deboe was convicted for public intoxication this morning and sent to jail for three days.
Sherwood—McCarthy.
Mr. Fred Sherwood and Miss Margaret McCarthy were married at the parochial residence in Cortland on Wednesday, June 7, by Rev. Father McLoghlin. The bridesmaid was Miss Annie Kinnarney, and the best man was Mr. F. H. Livingston of Ithaca. The wedding was a very quiet one, only a few of the most immediate relatives being present. A reception followed at the home of the bride's sister, Mrs. M. C. Ryan, 25 Park-st., Cortland, only the family friends being invited. Mr. and Mrs. Sherwood went to New York that night on the 11:25 train for a short wedding trip. They will reside at 38 Railway-ave.
BROKE A BIG WINDOW.
Small Boy Threw a Stone at Boys Who Teased Him.
The large plate glass, 66 1/2 by 100 1/2 inches in size, forming the south window of the store of Smith & Beaudry was smashed last night by a stone thrown by a small boy. The little fellow has often been standing about the front of the store, and a number of older boys have constantly been teasing him till it has sometimes seemed that his patience was about exhausted. Last night this was the order of affairs and a limit was reached. He finally picked up a stone and threw it at one of the offenders, but missed his aim and the stone went by and through the glass, smashing it badly. The glass cost from $60 to $70 and the question with Mr. Beaudry now is who is going to pay for that glass.
W. C. T. U. CONVENTION
Of Cortland County Held at Truxton on Tuesday, June 6.
The county W. C. T. U. convention held at Truxton, N. Y., was well attended, representatives being present from every union in the county. The morning session was short and occupied principally by the regular business arrangements. The principal features of the afternoon session were the following: An exercise on franchise ably conducted by the county president, Miss Libbie Robertson; a parliamentary drill conducted by Miss Adda Northrup of Homer, having for its subject "Amendments and Their Governing Rules:" and a paper by Mrs. Tanner of Blodgett Mills, "Is There Further Need for the Woman's Christian Temperance Union?" This last was followed by a general discussion, it being the unanimous decision that as long as there was wrong to be righted, as long as any were yet without Christ, the Woman's Christian Temperance union had still a mission to perform in helping.
Mrs. Nellie H. Hutchinson of Owego gave the address of the evening in her usual earnest and convincing manner, taking for her subject, "Wanted." Girls and boys, the speaker said, were wanted, wanted to be brave, true, Christian workers living pure white lives; mothers and fathers are wanted, wanted to train their children aright to create the atmosphere of true homes to help in the great work of bringing the world to Christ.
Music was furnished during the evening by a trio composed of Truxton gentlemen.
TENT CATERPILLARS.
Emergency Report by M. V. Slingerland of Cornell University.
The following emergency report of M. V. Slingerland of Cornell university upon the tent or forest caterpillar will be read with interest by all at the present time:
TENT CATERPILLARS.
Commissioner of Agriculture Wieting reports in a recent letter to Director Roberts that many orchards in the eastern part of the state are overrun with forest tent caterpillars. The writer is also receiving daily from village authorities in eastern New York appeals for aid in destroying the vast hordes of the hairy caterpillars of the same insect which are defoliating thousands of beautiful shade trees, especially maples, in many village streets. A trip to Oneonta convinced us that an alarming state of affairs exists wherever this insect occurs in such almost incredible numbers as we saw on many of Oneonta's fine maple shade trees. Thousands of the shade trees in many New York villages are doomed unless prompt measures are taken to destroy the caterpillars, or "maple worms," as many call them. We began making observations upon this insect last year, when it stripped the leaves from many maple sugar groves in our state, and we have been watching it this spring, when it seems to be more numerous and destructive all through the state than in many years.
Our studies are not yet completed, but there is such a general call for information regarding the insect that this preliminary report, or emergency bulletin, has been hastily prepared to meet the demand. We expect to publish a full account of the forest and the apple tent caterpillars, and will also discuss canker worms in the near future.
THE APPLE-TREE TENT CATERPILLAR.
Many are familiar with the common apple tent caterpillar, its work and especially its large silken tent which a colony of the caterpillars spin and use as a nest or home. These tent caterpillar nests have been altogether too conspicuous objects in the nearby landscape in most parts of our state during the past two years. It is the work of only a few moments to wipe out with a rag, or burn out one of these tents with its writhing mass of worms. The sooner this operation is performed after the nest is begun, the easier and more effectual will it be. Wild cherry trees along roadsides should be destroyed for they are a favorite breeding place for the apple tent caterpillars fall web worms, and other injurious insects. Our orchardists should learn to familiarize themselves with the egg-masses of the apple tent caterpillar, for one of the easiest and most effectual methods of controlling the pest is to collect and burn these egg-masses at any time between August and the following April; the egg-mass is very similar to, but a little larger than that of the forest tent caterpillar. Pay the boys and girls a few cents for each score or hundred of the egg-masses they collect; you will be doubly repaid when spring opens by a decided scarcity of caterpillar nests to wipe or burn out. Those who spray their orchards thoroughly with Bordeaux mixture to which Paris green or some similar poison has been added to the rate of one pound to 150 gallons of the Bordeaux, report little trouble in controlling apple tent caterpillars by this method alone. Caterpillar nests are usually a scarce article in orchards which have had three applications of the above spray. The first application should be made just before the blossoming period, when the caterpillars are very small and require but little poison to kill them; the second spraying should follow as soon as the blossoms have fallen, and a third application is usually necessary and advisable about a week or ten days after the second. Unless canker-worms occur in extraordinary numbers in an orchard, not many of them will live through the three applications above specified, if they are thoroughly made, and the same statements will apply to the forest tent caterpillars.
THE LIFE-STORY OF THE TENT CATERPILLARS.
In order to combat an insect pest the most effectively, one should know its life-story. This story of the lives of the apple and forest tent caterpillars may be briefly told. These two tent caterpillars are distinct kinds of insects but are very nearly related to each other and each has practically the same general life-history, differing only in some details of habits. The story of the apple tree tent caterpillar (clisiocampa americana) has been interestingly told in the Teacher's Leaflet, No. 5, which any one can get free by applying to the Bureau of Nature Study, college of Agriculture, Ithaca, N. Y.
At the date of writing (last week in May), the forest tent caterpillars (clisiocampa disstria) are nearly full grown in about two weeks or early in June, the caterpillars will be seen wandering about seeking a suitable place to undergo their wonderful transformations. They may select a leaf on or under the tree on which they fed, or some angle in your house or railfence may afford a more suitable place. Here, the caterpillar will begin to spin about itself a white shroud or cocoon, composed of silken threads, in which are mixed the hairs from its own body and the whole is given a powdery appearance by the caterpillar ejecting a liquid which becomes a yellowish powder upon drying.
Within this cocoon the caterpillar soon changes to the curious brown object—a pupa. In about ten days or two weeks after the cocoon is spun, or during the latter part of June, there emerges from it the adult insect—a buff-brown colored moth marked with a slightly darker band across each front wing. The moths fly mostly at night and are often attracted to lights.
Soon after emerging, the female moths deposit their eggs in masses of about two hundred each around the smaller twigs. The eggs are covered with a varnish like substance. The eggs thus deposited early in July will remain unhatched until the following April. Thus there is but one brood of the caterpillars in a year.
A very important difference in habit between the forest and the apple-tent caterpillar should here be emphasized. Lt is this: A colony or family of forest tent caterpillars hatching from the same egg-cluster, like their near relatives, work and live together during most of their life but they never make any tent or nest. The only approach to a web made by the forest tent caterpillars is a thin carpet spun on the bark or sometimes over several terminal leaves on which the whole family usually rest in a cluster during the day or when they are shedding their skins.
METHODS OF COMBATING THE FOREST TENT CATERPILLAR.
Fortunately both the apple and the forest tent caterpillars are preyed upon by many enemies, including insects, spiders, toads and birds. Where the forest tent caterpillars confine their work to their native haunts—the forest trees— we must depend largely upon these natural enemies to hold the insect in check. That these enemies are capable of doing this is evidenced by the fact that this insect usually appears in alarming numbers only at long intervals and its outbreaks usually last only a few years, as their enemies soon reduce their numbers to the normal. We visited several maple "sugar bushes" last year where the caterpillars had just finished stripping the foliage from all the trees, and we never saw so many parasitic foes; the little Ichneumons and Tachina flies were surprisingly numerous and busy getting in their deadly work on the caterpillars. Most owners of "sugar bushes" will have to depend on these little friends to check the depredations of the forest tent caterpillars, because it would usually be too expensive a job for an individual owner to undertake to combat the pest in his sugar grove. We hope and believe that the enemies of the caterpillars can be depended upon to get the upper hand and control the pest in the forests and sugar groves of New York in a year or two.
Where the forest tent caterpillars are present in alarming numbers in fruit or shade trees, however, the case is very different, and man should take prompt measures to check their ravages. In orchards the methods of gathering the egg-clusters and spraying with Bordeaux and Paris green, as discussed above, will usually control the forest tent caterpillars. The presence of these caterpillars is not so readily discovered because they erect no tent or "signboard" in the tree as does the apple tent caterpillar. The two kinds of caterpillars often occur in the same tree.
The control of the forest tent caterpillar on village shade trees is a special problem, but not a difficult one, we believe. Enlist the aid of the school teachers, and the school children will soon become an invaluable army to help in protecting the trees. Let a few public spirited citizens or the village board offer a prize to those pupils who collect over a certain number, say 1,000 or 10,000 of the unhatched egg-clusters at any time between Aug. 1 and April 1 of the following year; or pay the children a certain sum, a few cents for every hundred unhatched egg-clusters collected. All egg-clusters collected should be burned. The rivalry between the children will soon spread to rivalries between schools and the result will be that the number of the caterpillars will be reduced to the minimum by a single season's crusade of the children; and what may be of more value still is the fact that the teachers, children and many citizens will get lots of fun out of the warfare and all cannot help but learn a very instructive lesson in Mother Nature's ways.
The above suggestion is not a theory, for just such a crusade has been successfully carried out even in so large a city as Rochester, N. Y. We believe there is no cheaper and more instructive method of controlling these forest tent caterpillars in village shade trees. Begin the warfare in August or September, 1899, or better, after the leaves have fallen so that the eggs can be more easily seen on the twigs, and keep it up until the last egg-cluster is burned before April 1, 1900. Let the beautiful and valuable shade trees begin the new century free from the devastating caterpillars.
Shade trees can be, and have been, sprayed with a poisonous mixture and these forest tent caterpillars killed thereby. But the spraying must be done early in the spring after the little caterpillars hatch, when the first leaves are unfolding; and to spray large shade trees requires very expensive ($250 at least) apparatus, and experienced men to operate it. It is the nastiest kind of work, and the chemicals would be quite an item. Hence it is doubtful if spraying could be successfully employed to control these caterpillars in many villages. When the caterpillars get half or two-thirds grown as they are now (last week in May) they are so large that it would be a very expensive matter to feed them enough Paris green to kill them. We believe it would be cheaper, easier and more effectual, to either enlist the children, or to carry on a vigorous warfare against the nearly fall grown caterpillars during the latter part of May and the first week or two in June along the following lines:
Colonies of the caterpillars can be seen at almost any time of day clustered together on the bark of the trunk or large branches of the infested trees. Such a cluster of caterpillars is shown in figure 104. The apple tent caterpillar may usually be found in its nest during the day, but its forest relative makes no such retreat or home. "Where these clusters of caterpillars occur in reach on the trunks of the trees it is an easy matter to sweep them off and crush them. It is also an easy matter to dislodge the clusters occurring high up in the tree on the branches. One has simply to climb the tree with a padded mallet and suddenly jar (shaking will not do) the limbs on which the caterpillars are clustered, when nearly every caterpillar will drop to the ground as if shot, some spinning down by a silken thread which, however, they seem unable to ascend as a canker worm does. One should not be satisfied with jarring the caterpillars on to the ground, but a sheet or canvass should have been previously spread beneath the trees and some one employed to at once sweep the caterpillars into some receptacle where they can be burned or otherwise destroyed. Two men could thus remove and destroy nearly all the forest tent caterpillars on a large shade tree in a few minutes, and thus stop the breeding of the insect for the next season. The jarring method is also applicable to orchards and is, in fact, the only practical method to reach them after May 20. Where village shade trees are infested we would recommend that the village authorities hire two or more men, equip them with padded mallets, brooms, etc., and have them make a business of examining every shade tree and killing the caterpillars. All of the shade trees of a village should thus be gone over in a few days and millions of the caterpillars destroyed before they can transform. One hundred dollars expended in this way now would not be felt by the taxpayers and would doubtless result in saving shade trees worth ten times that amount. It would not be advisable to trust to individual property owners to jar their trees, for many would not do it, and thus would breed a crop of the caterpillars for their neighbors the next season.
Cotton batting, coal tar, or similar bands put on trees to prevent the caterpillars from crawling up, will avail but little in reducing their numbers, for only those which fall from the trees or happen to wander from the defoliated trees will thus be kept from going up.
These hordes of tent caterpillars which are now ravaging shade and fruit trees in our state can be readily controlled if prompt and intelligent action be taken.
M. V. SLINGERLAND.
BREVITIES.
—A regular meeting of the Sons of Veterans occurs to-night at 8 o'clock.
—The office of Village Clerk Fred Hatch and the stock exchange have been connected with the telephone exchange.
—New display advertisements to-day are—Model Clothing Co., Crash suits, page 4; G. F. Beaudry, Second hand wheels, page 6.
—A man who believes in the liberal use of printer's ink is John Wannamaker, who has just contracted with the New York Journal for a page advertisement six days a week for the sum of two hundred fifty thousand dollars a year.
—Carlton Sperry of Preston was killed Wednesday at Oxford by the breaking of a rope supporting staging upon which he was at work painting the Baptist church spire. He fell 80 feet to the ground, striking on his head and breaking his neck. Death was instantaneous. His age was 26 years.
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