STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. M 



then shoveled into the store-house. After lying in the store- 

 house for two weeks, they may be pressed into bales and prepared 

 for market. 



My average crop of hops has been about eight hundred pounds 

 per acre. I measured half an acre the past season that produced 

 five hundred and ten pounds, and my crop sold for ten cents and 

 a half in New- York. The expense of raising hops is about eight 

 cents per pound. 



The insect that is most troublesome and destructive to wheat, 

 in this country, is the Midge, a small fly one-fourth, to one-sixth 

 of an inch in length; its body is slim, of a pale yellow color and 

 surrounded by dark brown rings. Its wings are thin as gossamer, 

 and its motions so graceful that it is almost invisible on the wing. 

 The ova, which are deposited in the blossoms of wheat and other 

 flowers, when examined under a magnifying glass, have a striking 

 resemblance, in color and form, to the parent. These insects like 

 all others, make ample provisions for perpetuating the species, 

 but like other animated beings, they have their periods of pros 

 perity and adversity, and the rains of Autumn, and the snows and 

 frosts of winter destroy many of them; so that in the spring they 

 come out in feeble colonies, instead of the swarming hordes of 

 autumn. The ova soon hatch into delicate worms, that spin a 

 web, like the silk worm, and let themselves down from their birth 

 place to the earth, when the time and manner of their metamor 

 phosis is unknown. But it is not supposed to be long, as those 

 who watch the insects will find that they rapidly accumulate and 

 work upon red clover and some other flowers when the wheat 

 season lias passed. Hence it is to be inferred that early sowing 

 afl'urds the most probable mode of avoiding their destructive 

 assaults upon the wheat crop. 



The wire worm hus been injurious to many crops for several 

 years. It attacks potatoes and the roots of most kinds of grain. 

 About eight years ago I sowed a barrel of salt, in which I mixed 

 three pounds of arsenic, upon about three-quarters of an acre of 

 land, badly infested with wire worms. I plowed the salt in and 

 draggerl the gn^und; and in three or f »ur days 1 i>lowed tho 

 ground again and j)lant(d it with corn, and the croj) was unin- 

 jured by the worm, and producrd about eighty bushels per acre. 

 In my later exi)erience, I find that the wire worm is not partial 



