Plague for Caterpillars

Forest fires destroy millions of dollars' worth of lumber each year. But in some areas fires run second to the boring, chomping insect hordes that eat their way through the forest, leaving wide patches in ruin. Last week a Russian scientist reported considerable success in a kind of bacteriological warfare against a pesky caterpillar that attacks Siberia's vast evergreen forests.

For several years, Professor Evgeni Talalayev, chief of microbiology at Irkutsk University, collected caterpillars that had died naturally. Eventually he isolated one cause of death: a virulent bacterium, which he used to infect and kill large numbers of caterpillars. He then dried their bodies and ground them to powder.

Stirred into water and sprayed on the advancing insect armies, the mix starts a deadly chain reaction, one caterpillar infecting another until they are wiped out. Better yet, some infected caterpillars live long enough to spin cocoons. For years the rain that trickles over the dead cocoons spreads virulent spores and protects the forest from a new invasion of caterpillars.

Professor Talalayev's spray is harmless to higher animals, including man. (Acting as his own guinea pig, he once swallowed a whole spoonful of the spray without ill effects.) The first tests have been so successful that the spray is being produced in large quantities by a factory in Moscow. There is also a possibility that the spray will control another leaf-eating caterpillar, which attacks deciduous trees. Another promising victim for Talalayev's biological warfare: the viciously biting black fly that makes life miserable each spring for man and beast in Siberia, Canada and the northern U.S.

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