HINDRANCES TO SUCCESSFUL FARMING. 99 



nil}', and sheep, though a pretty sight on the Lindscapc and 

 useful, would be made into dog's meat before the orchard 

 would be cleared of worms. In the same way, plums safe 

 from the curculio can be raised in a poultry yard, and that 

 is not objectionable. The tent caterpillars and others can 

 be despatched by twisting off the pests with a wire brush 

 and burning. My way is to draw a lock of cotton wool or 

 tow through a wire loop on the end of a bamboo fish-pole, 

 dipping this into a dish of kerosene and applying a match. 

 It makes such a fearfully hot, quick flame, that judiciously 

 handled it will burn the nest and every worm without injury 

 to the limbs of the tree. The apple-tree borer can only be 

 destroyed by digging it out of its burrow just above the sur- 

 face of the ground. A mound of ashes or slaked lime or 

 gas lime around both the apple and peach trees helps some- 

 what to prevent the work of the borer. 



Rose bugs attack roses, grape-vines and cherry trees ; 

 from them there is no relief but hand picking. The potato- 

 bug does not diminish in numbers nor appetite, but they 

 are easily managed with two applications of plaster one hun- 

 dred pounds, and one pound of Paris green, carefully dusted 

 or sprinkled on, with no reasonable danger to man or beast. 

 The currant worm yields to hellebore. The large white grubs 

 with a yellow head, the larva3 of the great beetles that we 

 hear humming in the tree tops in JVIay, do an immense 

 amount of mischief in grass lands, especially in pastures, 

 eating off the grass roots and destroying the turf. They are 

 also often ruinous to the potato crop. It is said that they 

 live three years in the ground and that there is no way of 

 exterminating them, and I believe it. In a pasture where I 

 was getting out stone I found them for three years or more, 

 two feet and a half deep in the ground, and of all sizes, from 

 the tiny grublet of less than a quarter of an inch in length 

 to the mature nuisance of two inches. Skunks and crows 

 feed largely on them, and in that respect are our friends, 

 though with some unfriendly manners. 



The chinch bug is a terril^le scourge to the western farmers, 

 destroying fields of grain to the amount of $20,000,000 

 annually in the Mississippi Valley. Prof. Lintner, the ac- 

 complished entomologist of the State of New York, warns 



