THE CANADIAN ENTOMOLOGIST. 393 



APPLIED ENTOMOLOGY FOR THE FARMER. 



BY F. M. WEBSTER, WASHINGTON, D.C. 



Of all husbandmen, the true farmer, the grower of grains and 

 forage crops for sale or consumption on his premises, has been the 

 last to profit by the applied science of entomology. He in the 

 past has indeed supposed himself as helpless against the inroads 

 of insects upon his crops as the Indian squaw whose only hope of 

 saving her patch of Indian corn was in the effect of charms and 

 incantations in warding off attacks of wireworms, cutworms and 

 perhaps other similar pests. 



The beginnings in applied entomology consisted in dusting- 

 garden vegetables with soot, lime, ashes, and, somewhat later, 

 with powdered hellebore. But to the farfner these precautions 

 meant practically nothing. Though his farm might not be a large 

 one, -the area was usually too wide to render these measures prac- 

 ticable, even if they proved effective in a small way. It is true 

 that the trapping of cutworms under compact bunches of elder 

 sprouts, milkweed, clover and mullen, "placed in every fifth row 

 between every sixth hill," was known as early as 1838, but these 

 constituted only a trap or baits, the worms found under the traps 

 being killed by some sharp instrument. This measure, however, 

 seems to have never become popular. 



The spread of the so-called Colorado potato beetle over the 

 country from the west eastward brought the use of the Paris green 

 and London purple as insecticides to the front, but, again, this did 

 not help in the least the troubles of the ordinary farmer. 



The work of Riley, Packard and Thomas, on the western mi- 

 gratory locust, was the first important effort made to aid the far- 

 mer in devising practical measures of fighting destructive insects 

 over large areas. 



The spread of the cabbage butterfly from the east to the west- 

 ward brought into use as an insecticide the powdered blossoms of 

 Pyrethrum, but the farmer does not raise cabbage as either a grain 

 or a forage crop. 



Studies of the cotton-worm, by Riley and others, brought 

 Paris green again into use and developed that useful insecticide, 



November, 1913 



