TWENTY FIFTH ANNUAL MEETING. 167 



A. I think that remedy is put down by Prof. Weed for that insect. 

 These insects never appeared with us until last season, and I didn't know 

 what to do with them. They became very numerous, and I think the 

 vineyards will be almost completely destroyed unless some preventive 

 is used next season. The leaves turn brown, just as if they were dead in 

 the fall of the year, long before they should be, and I think they injure 

 the grapes also. The insect works on the leaves, near the wirp, and not 

 on the ends of the vines, so it is right along in the fruit. 



Mr. Harrison: If the adult insect can be destroyed by pyrethrum or 

 by any other method, we would like to know it. My idea is that the only 

 sure way to destroy the thrip is to commence when it is young, so soon 

 as it hatches, and I am not aware that there is anything that will destroy 

 it afterward. I use white hellebore, and it should be fresh and pure in 

 order to be effective. 



Q. Is there any way we may know when it is fresh? 



A. I am not able to say. 



Mr. Willard: It isn't so much the question of being fresh as to be free 

 from adulterations. I have bought hellebore by the barrel and used a 

 great deal of it, and found it just as good, and it would make you sneeze 

 just as hard, at the end of three years as in the beginning. The trouble 

 is the adulteration it meets after it leaves the factory. 



Mr. Helme: I have used it nineteen years and found it satisfactory. 

 There is an impression that there is less rainfall than when this country 

 was a wilderness. In 1839 I was down here hunting bear and deer, and 

 Black creek and another were dried up then; there was no water running 

 in them; there was just as big a drouth that year as there ever has been 

 since. Of couse, then it was nothing but a wilderness. The cause of 

 drouth is that the land has been skinned year after year. It is the bar- 

 renness of he land that makes drouth. We could stand it better if the 

 land were better. You will find that where the ground is rich enough 

 to bring forth a crop, it doesn't suffer much from drouth. 



Prof. Taft: From the Agricultural College bulletins we learn that we 

 have not had nearly as much rainfall of late. When long distances are 

 swept by winds, we must know that they take up the moisture from the 

 ground and carry it to different places. The greater the obstructions 

 to the wind, the less the wind would rifle the surface of the earth. Of 

 course, we had that drouth, but we didn't have as many crops then, and 

 it wasn't necessary to have so much rain; but now I think we have just as 

 good ground, and in many localities we don't have half a crop of corn 

 where the ground was rich enough to produce three times as much if we 

 had had a little moisture. The corn that was planted in May didn't come 

 up until July, which shows that there was an excessive drouth. 



