AMAZING DISCOVERY.

Northern Advocate, 6 May 1914, Page 3

AMAZING DISCOVERY.

ABOUT ORCHARD MOTHS.

(From The Little Paper.)

The most wonderful story of the month concerns a mere moth—the common winter moth which wrecks bur orchards, not only robbing us of fruit, but actually killing . the trees. The story is in two halves, and the first is our own.

In Kent, where farming is carried on with very high skill, live two wellknown men, Mr John Wood and his son,, Mr William Wood, famous fruitgrowers both, men who grow grapes by the ton, and send peaches to market by the cart-load. They possess also great orchards, which used to be so infested by winter motJis that, as Mr John Wood says, the orchards have been as bare of leaves at mid-summer as in the depths of winter.

The secret is simply this. The male

moth has wings; the female has not. The female, after leaving- the chrysalis stage in October or thereabouts, srawls up the trunks of trees, meets her flying lover in the tree-tops, and there deposits her eggs and dies. The eggs turn into caterpillars in spring, and the larvae eat the young leaves as they appear. Now, everybody knew the male, but nobody had discovered the female until Mr Wood found creepy-crawly things making 'their way up the trunks of the trees, caught in some treacly stuc with which he had plastered the trunks. He cut down one of the trees, and sent the log, carefully packed as it was, to Miss Ormerod, a clever lady then living, who acted as expert adviser on insects to the Government. She was delighted with the find, and declared that the insects caught in the treacle were none other than the long-sought females of the dreaded winter moth. She gave Mr Wood advice, and his son, educated in the Scientific Age, was burning to "treacle the trees."

"Why, the lad has come home filled with the wildest notions from his fechooling!" said his father. However, being a thoroughly pleasant and amiable old gentleman, the father, though sniffing a little with scorn, let his son have his way with a few trees.

The result was that the,son's* trees were undamaged, while his father's were, stripped by caterpillars. This sufficed for the, observant and skilful old farmer. He gave an order for several tons of mixture with which to ensnare the egg-laying female winter moths. We should expect that the results -were perfectly successful, but they were not. The remedy proved worse than the ill. The mixture killed the trees; they died by hundreds of thousands, until, Mr Wood says, not one of those treated survived. Father and son set their wits to work, and they devised a scheme, whereby the sticky mixture,' less harHiful in'character, was kept from • actual contact with the trees. .Grease-proof paper was first laid round the trunks, and the mixture was applied to that. • Finally success came, and the millions of trees which we see with bands about their trunks just now derive these bands and their safety from the experiments carried out (by'this astute Kentish farmer and his son. ' > ■

Now we come to a part of the story which seems almost incredible. ; The grease-bands, as they are called, were, perfectly successful at first, but of late years it has been noticed that the caterpillars of the -winter . moth have again appeared in the of protected fruit trees, and where that has happened the leaves have once more vanished down the throats of hungry insects.

Now, we are always taught to believe that it requires ages for such humble creatures as insects to alter their mode of living, though this as by

no means always true. The explanation of this new pest upon our ! fruit trees we owe to Messrs Chivers and Sons, the well-known fruitgrowers of Histon, Cambridge, whose insect expert has been carrying out elaborate and long-continued investigations as to the winter moth. He found females of the moth above the sticky bands spread to capture them as they crawled from the ground, where they had passed from the chrysalis stage to the perfect form. How had they come there? They could not possibly have climbed over the bands, and they certainly had not grown wings for the purpose. What, then, did the mystery mean?

The patient expert has concluded that the % winked male, which shoald meet his mate in the tree-tops to which he flies, carries lier over tiie deathtrap! This is a marvelolus example of insect intelligence, and a decided challenge to thoes who insist that the lower creatuer acts entirely from blind, unreasoning instinct. Greasebands have not been long enough la use for the winter moth to have developed this so-called instinct, and there must have been some reaosning powei" in £he little insect which worked but a plan to get over the. deadly hurdle of stickiness.

There seems little doubt that the flying male descends low upon tbe trunk of the tree, to that part beyond which his mate cannot safely climb, lets her mount upon his back, and then carries her to safety higher up, where a cradle may safely be made. If.it is really true, it is one of the most remarkable discoveries for many years.

Speaking at the Town Hall, Christchurch, on Tuesday evening Mr P. H. Hickey said that representatives of the Australian Labour movement, as well as New Zealand delegates, would be invited to" attend the conference which is being convened by the Federation of Labour to assemble in July next. They were going to link up with the workers of Australia, and then, he wanted to know, what were the workers of Wellington and of New Zealand going to do with the "Labour rats" wiio entered the field to smash the solidarity •c-f Labour? .