ELECTROCUTING CODLIN MOTHS.

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1269, 26 October 1911, Page 10

ELECTROCUTING CODLIN MOTHS.

THE LATEST AMERICAN DEVICE. According to the latest issue of tho "National Irrigation Journal" (Chicago), electricity as an agency to destroy the cc-dlin moth is fie latest innovation of modern app!? orcharding in the Spokane Valley, where Vf. M. Irost, inventor of tho device, and J. C. Lawrence, a practical grower of Spokane, made what is declared to bo the first demonstration of its kind in the world on the evening of Aujust 18. The test was mado in a six-year-old orchard at Opportunity, where a score of second-brood moths and hundreds of grefm ill/his wero killed in a few minutes. The apparatus consists of a storage battery to charge incandescent light globes of six candlc-power, which are netted with fine steel wires, coated with copper and tin, alternately. "Attracted by the bright light in tho tree, to which the gk.be is strung by a covered wire, the moth flies against the network, completes the electric circuit, and is instantly killed, the body dropping into a receptacle beneath the globe. Mr. Frost think" that one battery to an acre of trees will keep the moths under control, thus eliminating spraying, and saving many dollars for equipment and fluid.' If electric light wires are extended to the orchard tracts, as they are in (ho SpVcane Valley, the expenses of batteries may be saved by making direct connection and using the commercial current. The cost of covering the globes I with wire llets is a small item .and any electrician can do the work. Growers in various parts of eastern "Washington are preparing to erjuip their oreliards with the new pest destroyers the coming