The Cabbage Root Maggot. 527 



bage Root Maggot, if a little care is taken in applying them. 

 The protection evidently comes, not from the smell of the cards 

 tending to drive away the fly, but from her inability to get to the 

 stem to lay her eggs. The experience of the Messrs. Smiths at 

 Green Bay shows that the cards are practicable on a large scale. 

 Messrs. Smith Brothers wrote us they cut 20,000 for use this year ; 

 it costs them for material and labor about $1 to protect 1,000 

 plants. No second treatment is required ; sometimes a little care 

 is necessary in hoeing, so as not to cover the cards with dirt. In 

 our State it will not be necessary to use the cards after May 20. 

 They will not last more than one season, but new ones can be 

 made during the winter when other work is not so pressing. Most 

 of the Long Island gardeners with whom we discussed the method 

 were favorably impressed with it, but some of them set their plants 

 so deeply that it would not be practicable to properly put on the 

 cards. The plants are set so deeply that the bases of the first 2 

 or 3 leaves are below the surface. Of this method of setting, 

 Prof. Bailey says (Bull. 37, p. 405, of the Cornell Agr. Expt. 

 Station) : ' ' We find as a result of three years' investigation, that 

 the depth at which strong and stocky cabbage plants are set does 

 not influence the extent or weight of the crop." 



Therefore, we believe that gardeners will find that this method, 

 which is unfortunately only applicable to cabbages and cauli- 

 flowers, will prove, when properly carried out, the cheapest, most 

 practicable, and most efficient method yet devised for preventing the 

 ravages of the Cabbage Root Maggot. However, the same objection 

 may be raised against it as would apply to any preventive method ; 

 that is, it must be kept up for several years as the experience of 

 Messrs. Smith Brothers shows. Our discovery that the pest 

 breeds freely on several common weeds offers a reasonable ex- 

 planation why this is true. If all of the Cruciferous weeds in the 

 neighborhood could be exterminated and none of its other culti- 

 vated food-plants be grown unprotected near by, then a few years 

 of prevention with the cards would doubtless starve out the pest in 

 that locality. 



