New York Agricultural Experiment Station. 631 



Dry Poisoned Bait. 



One farmer, Mr. T. M. Vail, of Florida, tried the poisoned bran 

 bait remedy and found by actual tests that the cutworms would 

 feed on the dry bran just as well as on wet bran. In fact, the 

 wet bran bait caked and hardened after the first night, so that 

 the cutworms did not feed upon it as well as the}' did on the 

 dry bait. It was also found that by using middlings, instead 

 of bran, the bait could be applied with the seed drill alongside 

 {he onion reus. (See Plate LIII.) In most cases one a]){>licaiio}i 

 of the dry poisou bait was enough, unless a rain followed within 

 a day or two after it was sown. When the fields were visited 

 on May 27 it was found that the cutwo'rms not only fed on the 

 bran bait as they were migrating from the margins of the field, 

 l)ut that in many cases they left the onions to feed on the 

 bran. This habit was especially marked when the onions were 

 quite large. Ninety per cent, of the half-grown cutworms found 

 near the bait were dead. In fact, about the only specimens found 

 alive were those still small enough to climb and feed on the ten- 

 der portion of the onions. 



For use on the fields this dry poisoned bait has the following 

 advantages: First, it can be applied in drills around the margins 

 of the fields and thus serve as a barrier against the migration of 

 the cutworms from the margins of the ditches and driveways. 

 Second, it is easily applied at a uniform rate with the onion-seed 

 drills. Third, if the worms become scattered over the fields it 

 can be applied in drills alongside the onio'n»Tows. (Plate LIII 

 shows a field treated with the poisoned bait, over which the cut- 

 worms had scattered.) Fourth, the trouble of mixing with water 

 and ladling out in piles, together with the addition of molasses 

 or sugar, which some have recommended, is avoided. As a whole 

 the tests made with the dry bran show that it is as effective as 

 hand picking; that it is less expensive, and, in the case of onions, 

 as near a perfect remedy as we can hope to obtain under the 

 present methods of cultivation and care of the crop. If this bran 

 bait had been used by every grower of onions in Orange county 

 on May 10, 1896, not over one-tenth of the crop would have been 



