NOTES ON THE HABITS OF THE CURCULIO. 



another of 30 bushels of wheat to the acre, would leave a handsome profit to that farmer 

 who would pursue with method and energy, the practice of never taking an atom of 

 food for plants from the soil in the shape of a crop, without, in some natural way, re- 

 placing it again. For, it must be rememembered, that needful as the soil is, every 

 plant gathers a large part of its food from the air, and the excrement of animals fed 

 upon crops, will restore to the soil all the needful elements taken from it by those 

 crops. 



The principle has been demonstrated over and over again, but the difficulty is to get 

 farmers to believe it. Because they can get crops, such as they are, from a given soil, 

 year after year, without manure, they think it is only necessary for them to plant — 

 Providence will take care af the harvest. But it is in the pursuit of this very system, 

 that vast plains of the old world, once as fertile as Michigan or Ohio, have become 

 desert wastes, and it is perfectly certain, that when we reach the goal of an hundred 

 millions of people, we shall reach a famine soon afterwards, if some new and more 

 enlightened system of agriculture than our national " skinning" system, does not 

 beforehand spring up and extend itself over the country. 



And such a system can only be extensively disseminated and put into practice by 

 raising the intelligence of farmers generally. We have, in common with the Agri- 

 cultural Journals, again and again pointed out that this is mainly to be hoped for 

 through a practical agricultural education. And yet the legislatures of our great ag- 

 ricultural states vote down, year after year, every bill reported by the friends of agri- 

 culture to establish such schools. Not one such school, efficient and useful as it might 

 be, if started with sufficient aid from the state, exists in a nation of more than twenty 

 millions of farmers. " What matters it," say the wise men of our state legislatures, 

 " if the lands of the Atlantic states are worn out by bad farming ? Is not the great 

 WEST the granary of the world ?" And so they build canals and railroads, and bring 

 from the west millions of bushels of grain, and send not one fertilizing atom back to 

 restore the lands. And in this way we shall by-and-bye make the fertile prairies as 

 barren as some of the worn out farms of Virginia. And thus "the sins of the fathers 

 are visited upon the children, even to the fourth generation !" 



NOTES ON THE HABITS OF THE CURCULIO. 



BY J VAN BUREN, CLARKSVILLE. GA. 



Mr. Downing — For the last six or eight years I have been endeavoring to cultivate 

 plums and nectarines, amongst other fruits; but from the depredations of that pest, the 

 curculio, I have never yet had the satisfaction to have one ripen. On the opening of the 

 present season, I determined to ascertain more of the history, habits, and if possible, 

 some better remedy for the evil than was yet known. If the results of the numerous 

 experiments I have run " the Turk" through, will be of any service to the readers 

 Horticulturist, they are at your service. 



