80 PRIZE ESSAY : 



" With perhaps equal advantages we find an enormous discre- 

 pancy in some of our own wheat-growing districts. In the year 

 1850, the township of Esquesing, in the county of Halton, pro- 

 duced 26 bushels of wheat to the acre, and that of Adolphus- 

 town, in the county of Lennox, only six bushels to the acre, and 

 this with soil and climate perhaps equally good. This is at once 

 accounted for by the ravages of that fearful plague to the far- 

 mer — the weevil. The worst wheat crops in Canada "West, in the 

 year 1851, were in those counties where the weevil was prevalent. 

 It committed the most serious depredations, in very many cases 

 having rendered whole fields of most promising wheat not worth 

 the threshing. This fly, which deposits its larvse in the blossom 

 of the wheat in order to feed upon the milk of the grain as it 

 ripens, was, unfortunately, in that year most abundant in the 

 counties of Frontenac, Lennox, Addington, Hastings, and Prince 

 Edward, and is travelling gradually west at the rate of about nine 

 miles every svxmmer, and remains from five to seven years in a 

 locality. The only prevention yet discovered has been to sow 

 early seed on early land, and very early in the autumn, so that 

 the wheat may blossom before its enemy takes wing, the period 

 for which depends much upon the earliness of the season. So 

 destructive was the fly in 1851, that the fine agricultural county 

 of Lennox produced only six bushels per acre, Hastings about 

 ten, and Prince Edward, Addington and Frontenac, about eleven. 

 It had not in that year reached the county of Northumberland, 

 but was very destructive in that county the following year, 1852." 



Contrary to expectation, did not commit ravages in Seneca 

 County, New York. 



1851. 



Very destructive in Frontenac, Lennox, Addington, Hastings, 

 and Prince Edward Counties, Upper Canada. Destructive in the 

 great wheat district west of Cayuga, New York. 



