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Show CATCH AND DESTROY MOTHS Improvement on Plan of Banding Trees With Burlap Has Been Devised De-vised by an Expert. When the codling moth larva has (lone its best to destroy the appearance of the ripest and rosiest fruits it can find, it seeks a place to spin a cocoon, and for this purpose it generally crawls up or down a tree trunk. Hence the usual method of trapping the moth is to wrap a band of burlap around the tree trunk. An improvement on this method, devised by E. II. Sigler of the United States bureau of entomology ento-mology employs a wire screen over the burlap band to form a trap into which the larva enters and spins its cocoon, but from which it cannot escape as a moth. To make the trap, strips of burlap six inches wide are folded into three thicknesses. - The loose bark from the lower branches and trunk of the tree is removed. A strip of this burlap Is folded once around the trunk and held in place by large tacks, driven in such a way that the edge projects about one-fourth of an inch beyond the burlap. bur-lap. Black-painted wire screening with twelve meshes to the inch is then cut into strips six inches wide, and the edge of each strip is folded twice, allowing one-fourth of an Inch to each fold. The strip of screening should be long enough to allow for an overlap of three to four inches when placed around the tree over the burlap. It is tacked to the tree so that both the upper and lower edges fit snugly i ! A Burlap Band Covered With a Wire Screen, j against the bark. The projecting tacks used to fasten the burlap prevent pre-vent the wn're from pressing against the cloth. To make sure that no moths cam escape through the openings open-ings along the- edges of the trap or along the flap, a thin coating of pitch tar may be used: The traps may be placed on the tree during the winter or to the spring, not later than one month after the petals have dropped- Popular Science Monthly. |
