PREVENTION AND REMEDIES. 147 
the grubs appearing to me to be the same; and though I have been 
sowing Gorse coverts for twenty years, I have never suffered from 
such an attack before.’—(R. T. C.) 
PREVENTION AND Remepies.—We seem to have really made a little 
advance in remedial measures in the past season by the addition of 
dressing with nitrate of soda and salt mixed, and hand-sown after 
hoeing between the rows and between the roots. 
Hitherto the only available methods of treatment with us have 
appeared to have been free use of the drags and harrows, especially 
amongst young crops, and also much hoeing; likewise the very costly 
though sure plan of hand-picking the caterpillars from the infested 
roots. This last certainly is a complete cure, but it has to be con- 
sidered whether the large outlay or the whole or partial loss of the 
crop is the greater evil. 
' In the past year I had the following note relatively to hoeing as 
an attempted remedy from one of my yearly correspondents, Mr. S. 
B. Burroughes, Wiveton Hall, Holt, Norfolk, which shows the severity 
of the attack which he was then trying to clear :— 
‘“‘ Enclosed you will find some grubs which are taking my Turnips 
off, especially the small ones; we find seven or eight at a root. I 
have ten men in a ten-acre field hoeing round the Turnips to disturb 
them all I can, and the horse-hoe close to hand. . . . There 
appear to be sufficient grubs to eat the whole crop; they eat the 
small Turnips through just beneath the surface of the ground.’’— 
(eo. B. B.) 
Another (or several) correspondents thought that joining hoeing 
and hand-picking would act well. Thus (instead of sending workers 
along the rows to stir out the grubs with a pointed stick, or old knife, 
and collect them into any convenient pot or pail for destruction) to let 
children, or workers at less cost than able-bodied day-labourers, follow 
the hoes, and gather all the grubs they could find. 
The American plan of clearing the pests by placing bundles of food 
poisoned with Paris-green, or other arsenites, along the rows, appears 
to be much used there, and very successfully ; but, I should say, was 
wholly inadmissible in this country on account of the great risk (or 
rather certainty) of poisoning any of the farm stock which might 
accidentally gain access to the arsenically-dressed food, and also the 
havoc it would make amongst hares, rabbits, and the like. 
With regard to nitrate of soda and salt.—The trial of this was 
suggested to me early in last season’s attack by Mr. D. D. Gibb, of 
Ossemsley Manor Farm, Lymington, Hants, and I mentioned the 
subject to various of my correspondents, amongst others to Mr. 
Herbert Prater, Parlington Estate Office, Aberford, near Leeds, who 
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