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is, of course, most efficacious, but over the larger portion of the terri- 
tory ravaged by this pest it is customary to seed with grass after wheat, 
and under this condition burning over the stubble field is impossible. 
Such fields should be raked over with an ordinary hay rake, and 
the loosened stubble removed and burned before the adults have 
emerged in the spring. If, however, the grain is cut low at harvest, and 
the straw passed through the stables as bedding for stock during the 
winter, thus becoming saturated by liquids and more or less thoroughly 
composted, the treatment would seem sufficient to destroy the Isosoma 
larve, so that few, if any, would develop adults the following spring. 
In case of bedding for horses, it seems quite probable that if any larvee 
survived at all the heat from the decomposing manure would develop 
them prematurely. However, there has been no experimentation along 
these lines, and according to a recent press bulletin! by Prof. R. H. 
Pettit, of the Michigan Agricultural College, serious injuries have fol- 
lowed the year after application and plowing under of barnyard manure 
in the fall before the wheat was sown. In this case the manure would 
necessarily be fresh and the bedding of straw of the same season’s 
growth, otherwise the adults would have already emerged. This would 
be a proposition quite different from that of allowing the stable manure 
to accumulate during the winter and applying it in the spring elsewhere 
than to the wheat fields, or even of applying it to wheat fields before 
plowing, months after the larve surviving the effects of the stable 
had developed and escaped. The one might destroy all or nearly all 
larvee in the straw, and the survivors would emerge about the stables or 
in the barnyard; while the other method, simply to take the straw with 
the living larve present from an old field, move it through the stable, 
eart it out on a new field, and plow it under, is one that the farmer 
should evidently be careful to avoid. 
Rotation of crops is advantageous, because it necessitates the migra- 
tion of adults from one field to another, and if this is done in stormy 
weather or during high winds, many of the migrants will be killed or 
blown astray. It is easily seen that where infested straw is applied to 
a new field prior to sowing to wheat, this migration of adults would not 
be made necessary. 
The sowing of early ripening varieties is also beneficial. 
1Mich. Agri. Col. Exp. Sta., Press Bul. No. 15—The Wheat Joint Worm. 
Approved : 
JAMES WILSON, 
Secretary of Agriculture. 
WASHINGTON, D. C., October 20, 1905. 
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