CATERPILLAR PESTS

Evening Post, Volume CVI, Issue 48, 25 August 1923, Page 14

CATERPILLAR PESTS

SWEEPING TROUGH. BOHEMIA.

Oscar John, a New York musician,' who returned recently from Czecho Slovakia, said to a "New York Times" reporter that"the great forests of^Nbrthern Bohemia were being destroyed'by a caterpillar pest. * .

: j- "The caterpillars in Northern Bohe,mia," said Mr. John, "originate -in myriads from the black butterfly called the Nonne, or Nun in English, which lays its eggs-on the ground in the forests. Directly these /insects are hatched they swarm up the trees,'sapping its life as they climb up the-trunk by eat-: mg all the green shoots and leaves. On reaching the top the caterpillars swing by their own sapliva across/to the next tree and destroy it as they go down to the ground. Millions of • these crawling pests make a miss when they are doing the aerial trapeze act and fall to the ground so thickly that it is just like

. "Peasants walking through these dense forests have to carry great cotton um--brellas to' prevent themselves, from being smothered by the caterpillars. There are no picnics under, the trees, because a soup basin would be filled up before there would be a chance to eat the contents. • .'.'.'

"The only thing that can be done with the trees after the caterpillai's have finished -with them is to cut down the dead trunks and x saw them up into'logs; for firewood. It gives one an uncanny feeling to walk through the great dark forests of Northern Bohemia and bear the, gloomy croak of the. buzzgloak from the lofty-branches of ~tlie>-trees and pitterpatter of. the caterpillar 'rain on , the big umbrellas carried by the peasants.";