CATERPILLAR INVASION.

Clutha Leader, Volume XXXV, Issue 2125, 26 January 1909, Page 7

CATERPILLAR INVASION.

REMEDIES SUGGESTED, Regarding the plague of caterpillars ruining the crops in Canterbury, the f following letters-appear in the 'rress': I "Some time ago I was visiting a sugar plantation, and during the ploughing season, owing to the ground being broken up and turned over, immense numbers of locusts were hatched from eggs laid by a swarm that had passed over ' the district some twu years previously. I Mr friend's neighbors looked upon tne disaster as too vast to he coped with, and millions of little locusts- tn.at could not yet fly were allowed by these planters to hop along, eating up everything before them, and to grow and mature, and in their turn lay more eggs. My friend, who was naturally of a determined and active disposition, got all his hands together, stripped the galvanised iron off his sheds, and used it for wings to guide the locusts into short deep trenches, where they were* killed and buried. While one lot of trenches were being filled a second lot were under construction a few yards behind thenl. Caterpillars travel much more slowly than the young locusts could, and, therefore, though fewer people would be available here, they would have more time to dig trenches and place the wings in position. The lower edge of the iron needs to be inserted in the ground, and for caterpillars the face of the iron would probably need to be rubbed over with an oily rag. My friend thus destroyed more than 4000 bushels of locusts that at that time were less than a quarter of their natural size, and he saved the great majority of his crop." Another correspondent, says: in regard to the caterpillar plague in the South Island, about fourteen years ago the pest was very bad in some parts of the North Island. 'They were coming down the coast in myriads, gating not only all the grass, but the roots of the cocksfoot. They had reached my neighbor's place, and I saw them eating the paddocks out as they came along. Having travelled behind mobs of sheep on the road on a wet day, I noticed that there was no part of the road that the sheep's feet had not trod. So : I mustered up about a thousand sheep i the night before they came into my j land. I got men with dogs to meet I them at daybreak. "With the mob of | sheep, keeping th'em together the same ! as driving them on a road, backwards and forwards along thoir line of march, it effectually ended the caterpillars. Others tried the same method with ! similar success. Caterpillars feed and i travel through the night, and hide through the day in grass but you catch them early in the morning when they are on the surface of the ground feeding."