THE REPORT OF THE No. 19 



they should without del&y sell to the grain buyers, who knowing the advantage of fumigating; 

 early would soon make arrangements, even if they had not these already, to treat the seed so 

 as to get the best sample possible. With regard to those peas which shell out in the field, I; 

 cannot see any very great difficulty with these. It is the common practice in the pea growing 

 districts for farmers to turn in hogs after the crop is harvested. These pick up every seedi 

 cleanly, and with the assistance of poultry I imagine that few infested peas would be left on> 

 the field to carry over the infestation. If thought preferable, these peas could be turned down. 

 below the point where the weevils would be able to reach the surface after emerging, by 

 ploughing down the land deeply either in autumn, and of course preferably then, or in spring. 



I have here some samples of peas which have been treated at various dates from the end of 

 July until the middle of September. These have been kindly supplied by Mr. W. P. Niles, 

 of Wellington, Out., a well known seed merchant who deals largely in peas. By examining, 

 those fumigated on the 31st July, it is evident that the weevil is at that time very small and 

 that the proportion of the pea which has been destroyed, is much smaller than it is when the 

 peas, have been treated only one week later, the grub being at that time not even half grown and 

 only a small amount of the seed being destroyed. From that date on the destruction to the 

 seed is rapid and by the middle of the month of August most of the peas contain full grown, 

 larvae or pupte. I have here samples of peas grown this year and treated on the 28th August, 

 which contain the fully developed beetles, and it is probable that by the middle of the month in 

 an ordinary year perfect beetles may be found. My recommendation therefore is that farmers- 

 should reap early, thresh at once, treat their seed, or sell to others who will, before the middle - 

 of August, and never sow a single seed which has not first been fumigated. Talk the matter up- 

 whenever an opportunity arises and guard against pooh-poohing the whole matter and saying : 

 " Oh we know all about the Pea Weevil, that's the same as the Pea Bug ;" we have always had 

 that, and thereby arguing by inference that they always will have it. 



Now I don't believe that there is any necessity for such a valuable Canadian crop as peas, 

 either to be given up or to be infested by the Pea Weevil. I find from the August 1902 Ontario 

 Crop Bulletin that the acreage this year under peas has been reduced from the area sown last 

 year by 70,000 acres, and the yield by 1,274,000 bushels. This is undoubtedly a very serious 

 lijss, because certain districts of Ontario are particularly well suited for the production 

 of this cereal. There is evidence to show that many of these districts specially 

 suited to the cultivation of the pea crop, and where peas of the highest quality used 

 to be grown, cannot now produce paying crops of peas owing to the depredations- 

 «'f the Pea Weevil. There are, however, many districts, as for instance the upper 

 Ottawa country and other northern districts, where paying crops of peas are being or 

 could be grown, and the passing of legislation forbidding the cultivation of peas over 

 the whole province would therefore be a hardship. There is another point which may be re- 

 ferred to. It is frequently claimed by dealers that peas which have been injured by the pea- 

 weevil are just as good for seed as perfect seeds. This is manifestly nonsense, but, to be in a. 

 position to prove this, I have in several seasons experimented by sowing infested seed and 

 taking careful notes on how many plants grew and what was the vigour of these plants. During: 

 the past season I planted several rows of early peas which had been bored by Pea Weevils. 

 The average number of these seeds which grew and produced seed bearing plants was 7. and of 

 these some were weakly. This is rather a lower average than has been obtained in previous 

 years, but it was what the season of 1902 showed. It has been found by many experiments 

 made by botanists at Washington and at Agricultural Colleges that large seeds of plants, as a- 

 rule, produce more vigorous plants than small seeds. Much more would this be the case where 

 nature had laid up in a seed a certain amount of food to feed the embryo plantlet in that 

 seed, and subsequemtly a large proportion even to one-fourth of its bulk was accidentally taken. 



