220 EXPERIMENTAL FARMS 



4-5 EDWARD VII., A. 1905 



ih£ive drawn attention very frequently. The annual loss at the present time is enor- 

 mous, and yet, if those who grow clover seed practise the simple remedy of feeding off 

 or mowing the first crop before June 20, the results are always so satisfactory that I 

 cannot tmderstand why the practice is not more generally adopted. 



Mr. G. H. Clark, Chief of the Seed Division of the Department of Agriculture, 

 who has exceptional opportunities of learning the condition of crops throughout the 

 country, writes to me as follows : — 



' Ottawa, Nov. 30. — Referring to your inquiry about the condition of the clover 

 seed crop for 1904, I have to say that our instructor in seed-growing for the province 

 of Ontario has reported that, on account of the severe winter, the crops of alsike and 

 red clover in June and later months appeared patchy, and, in consequence, a much 

 smaller area was left for seed crop than in previous years, Mr. Newman also inspected 

 fields of red clover that had been left for seed in nearly all of the districts where red 

 clover seed is extensively grown, and found in practically every county that the crops 

 had been badly injured by the midge. These conditions, together with the unfavour- 

 able weather for ripening the seed, would indicate that the clover seed crop of 1904 

 will fall considerably below the average.' 



Further efforts will be made next season to draw the attention of the clover seed 

 growers to this important matter; and it is to be hoped that a reduction may be made 

 in the great amount of loss which is now taking place every year. Letters appeared 

 in the newspapers last year at the end of June, advising the best steps to take and 

 a few farmers followed them; but the result of the clover seed harvest of this year is 

 very unsatisfactory. The plants in many places suffered from the severity of last 

 winter, and there was a great deal of winter-killed clover in spring. Alsike seems to 

 have suffered even more than red and marmnoth clovers, and red clover in all partis 

 of the province of Ontario was injured by the midge. In travelling over part of New 

 Brunswick and in the Annapolis valley of Nova Scotia in June last, I found red clover 

 in almost every section badly attacked by the midge. 



The Corn Worm (Eeliothis armiger, Hbn.). — From time to time complaints are 

 received from various parts of the country of more or less injury to sweet corn in 

 autumn by the caterpillar of a noctuid moth, which is known by various popular names. 

 It is what Professor Lugger called the Sweet Com Moth, or Tassel Worm, in 

 Minnesota, and is also the same as the notorious southern ' Boll Worm ' of the cotton, 

 to which crop it frequently does great damage and for which it has been found very 

 difficult to find a practical remedy. The name of widest \ise is the Corn Worm, 

 although its injuries in Canada are not confined to Indian corn, for the caterpillars 

 have also been found boring into the fruit of tomatoes and attacking many otlier 

 plants. There is but one brood in the j^ar in Canada, the caterpillars occurring in 

 autumn and the moths from these emerging the following summer. The worst injury 

 by this insect in Canadian crops is to the cobs of sweet com, because the work of the 

 caterpillars renders the ears unsightly and discoloured so as to be unfit for the table. 



In 1898 there was a bad attack at Orillia, Ont., when as much as 95 per cent of 

 the ears of both sweet corn and yellow field com were injured. There were other out- 

 breaks in the same year in western Ontario and at Ottawa. These caterpillars do not 

 appear till late in the season, generally during the months of September and October, 

 when they may be found of all sizes, eating the young grairis near the tips of the ears, 

 frequently as many as five or six caterpillars working in the same ear. As they 

 approach full growth, when they are an inch and a half in length, they frequently eat 

 their way out of one ear and attack another one. 



The only account of inj'ury by the Corn Worm this year comes from Nova Scotia, 

 and is the first record I have had of injury by it in that province. 



' Mahone Bay, Sept. 7. — I send you under separate cover specimens of what is to 

 us a new pest. It affects garden corn in the way you will see by the portions of seve- 



