198 Forty-fifth Report oy the State Museum. 



haps be accomplished in this manner: After the ground has received 

 the thorough breaking up and working over in the autumn and spring 

 above recommended, follow with a crop of buckwheat. Wonderful 

 efficacy has been claimed for this plant in freeing ground from wire- 

 worms. Of the abundant testimony that might be quoted on this 

 point, we will only give that of the late Hon. A. B. Dickinson, who 

 has stated as follows: 



" After experimenting with salt and lime, and many other things 

 recommended, I have found only one remedy for the rascals, and that 

 is to break the sod and sow it to^^buckwheat. Plow late, and as often as 

 possible, in the fall, and then sow it to pease in the spring. With a like 

 plowing the next fall, they will not injure any crop the following 

 season." 



3. Mustard Remedy. — In England a crop of mustard is regarded by 

 many as an absolute specific against the wire-worm. In an address 

 before an agricultural society there, the speaker, after narrating some 

 successful experiments which he had made with mustard, on a small 

 scale, made the following explicit statement: 



" Thus encouraged by these results, I sowed Avith mustard the next 

 year a Avhole field of forty-two acres, which had never repaid me for 

 nineteen years, in consequence of neai'ly every crop having been 

 destroyed by the wire-worm. I am warranted in stating that not a 

 sifigle wire-icorm could he found the folloxoing year, and the crop of 

 wheat througliout was superior to any that I have grown for twenty- 

 one years ! " 



As possibly some of the readers of the Country Gentleman may not 

 distinguish between the wire-worm, the cut- worm, and the "thousand- 



FiG. 3S. — Larva of Agriotes Fig. 39.— Larva of Melanotus communis. (After 



MA>crs. (After Fiteh.) Fitch) 



legged " worm, it may be desirable to state that the first-named is a 

 small (usually less than an inch in length), slender, flattened creature, 

 with shining surface, and often of a horc-color or pale brown or 

 yellowish shade; its texture is tough and leathery. The first three 

 segments of tlie body are each furnished with a j^air of rather long 

 four-jointed legs, while the last segment bears a single retractile proleg. 

 Figures 38 and 39 are rude rei^resentations of two of the common 

 species — Figure 38 being the Agriotes mancus of Say (regarded by Dr. 

 Fitch as A. truncatus of Melsheimer), and Figure 39, Melanottis com- 



