TWENTIETH ANNUAL MEETING. 77 



to 200 gallons. Sprinkle the leaves with this, drive through the field and 

 scatter in bundles. The worm§ travel rods, sometimes in quest of food or 

 for other reasons, but the moth will not lay eggs where there is no herb- 

 age. The past season was the worst ever known for cutworms. The mild 

 winter caused an unusual supply, and of saw-flies also, the pupse passing 

 the winter better than if it had been severe. 



W. W. Tkacy: Cutworms were excessively thick upon Mr. Ferry's farm 

 at Pontiac. We lost fifty tomato plants in two nights; yet, by poisoned 

 clover, we saved the plants on two acres of the same ground except, per- 

 haps, one half of one per cent. We placed the clover bundles a rod apart 

 and found as many as thirty worms under a single bunch. The cutworm 

 which attacks fruit trees is of a different species from the one which 

 eats the corn and vegetables. They go to the fruit trees and vines because 

 they have to— for want of other food — but originally they did not do so. 



POINTS IN VEGETABLES. 



Concluding the afternoon session. Prof. W. W. Tracy, superintendent 

 of D. M. Ferry & Co.'s seed farms and testing grounds, discoursed upon 

 " Points of merit in vegetables," illustrating his remarks by figures drawn 

 upon paper. He said: 



QUALITY IN GAEDEN VEGETABLES. 



I want to ask your attention for a few moments to the consideration of 

 desirable qualities in some of our common garden vegetables, speaking of 

 each as a whole rather than of any particular variety. Possibly this may 

 seem unnecessary. Most of you think you know beans, at least well 

 enough to tell good from bad, and all of you recognize the superiority of 

 vegetables as brought to your tab^e by your wife or mother; but would it 

 not be worth while to give a little thought to those external indications 

 which enable one, who can read them, to recognize a good vegetable with- 

 out a cooking test? And this is what I ask you to do with me this after- 

 noon; and first let us look at 



ASPARAGUS. 



There has been a good deal of discussion as to whether this vegetable 

 should be blanched or green, some claiming that blanched shoots only 

 are really fit to eat, and refer for proof to the long, tender, and delicious 

 shoots served up in France, where only blanched asparagus is used. 

 Others say the brown or blanched portion is always tough, woody, and 

 flavorless, and only the green portion should be used; that we must never 

 cut or break below the surface. We think a little consideration of how 

 the plant grows will disclose the cause of this difference of opinion. The 

 young shoots of asparagus expand and elongate very fast at first, but with 

 gradually decreasing rapidity. The hardening or development of woody 

 fibre commences at the base of the shoot and extends upward, slowly at 

 first, but with gradually increasing rapidity until it overtakes the elon- 

 gating point about the time it breaks into branches, and the entire shoot 

 becomes hard and unedible. 



An asparagus shoot, or bud before it becomes a shoot, is woody at the 

 point of juncture with the collar from the first, so that if we cut it at the 



