196 EXPERIMENTAL FARMS 



8-9 EDWARD VII., A. 1909 



' Poiiite du Lac, Que. — 1 send specimens of grasshoppers which are actually 

 destroying the crops in our district. We have tried the Criddle mixture, but it has 

 not had an appreciable effect on their numbers. — Rev. J. Caron.' 



' Galetta, Ont., July 17. — Please give a remedy for grasshoppers. A very large 

 army of them has attacked a fi'eld of oats having come from a large adjoining pasture. 

 I have tried Paris green on a ridge without effect. — Matthew Eiddi^ll.'' 



* Ballantrae, Ont., Aug. 22.^Seeing that various reports are going in with regard 

 to the grasshopper plague I thought I would tell you how wc were faring in this part 

 of the province. I live on the ridges of the township of Whitchurch, county of York, 

 and our soil here for the most part is a sandy loam. The grasshoppers struck this 

 locality early in the season and we are suffering greatly from their ravages. Other 

 localities escaped until later in the season, but they are becoming general and wide- 

 spread now. They have taken all second crop and spring-s'eeded clovers. Pasture 

 land is as bare and brown as a barn floor. Some farmers left their oats standing 

 until completely stripped, others cut them in the milk, and they were half stripped 

 even at that stage. The turnip crop is practically gone. In some cases the carrot 

 crop is eaten level with the ground and their latest freak is eating out the mangel 

 roots. Peas have escaped fairly well but. some fields are nearly stripped of their 

 foliage. Fodder corn is eaten in holes and they are boring through the husks and 

 eating out the grain of the ear. They started about a week ago upon the potatoes and 

 some patches are now bare. They cut the leaves off and drop them and the stalk is 

 sometimes eaten through at the bottom and just falls over and dries up. Vegetables 

 are entirely destroyed and raspberry, gooseberry and currant bushes are stripped bare. 



— W. A. QUANTZ.' 



Last summer was extremely dry in many localities and where this was the case 

 growth was slow and meagre and here the grasshoppers did most harm. In some 

 places where copious rains came late in the season and vegetation of all kinds picked 

 up the injuries by grasshoppers were much less apx>arent. Rev. Father Caron 

 when writing in the middle of August from Point du Lac, Que., refers to this and 

 speaks of his previously reported poor effects of the Criddle mixture of Paris green 

 and horse manure in his parish, which he says the farmers did not use sufficiently to 

 give it a fair trial because it did not show immediate results. This was the case also in 

 many other places where the mixture was tried. There is evidence to show, however, that 

 this mixture which undoubtedly gave most satisfactory results in Manitoba wherever 

 it was tried has not proved so successful in some other i^laces. Whether this is due 

 to the climatic conditions I am unable to say, but in Manitoba the grasshoppers were 

 destroyed in myriads and the mixture was remarkably attractive to them, so that 

 they would flock to those parts of the field where it had been scattered and were 

 poisoned by eating it. In Ontario on the other hand it would seem to be much less 

 attractive to the species which occur commonly here. For these districts it may be 

 remembered that the now well known poisoned bran remedy for cutworms (one pound 

 of Paris green, one pound of salt and one gallon of water, in 100 pounds of bran) may 

 be used and is extremely effective against grasshoppers of all kinds. In fact this 

 mixture of Paris green and bran was originally devised in California as a remedy 

 against grasshoppers in vineyards. The spraying of the edges of fields with arsenical 

 mixtures when grasshoppers first begin to move towards crops has also been found very 

 useful. Later when the insects have their wings and are occurring in large numbers 

 a modification of the tin pans or light frame works known in the west as 'hopper- 

 dozers,' may be used to great advantage. These are light frames with wings and a 

 back covered with canvas and having a tin pan at the bottom wliich will hold tar or 

 coal oil and water. These are drawn over pastures or in such places as grasshoppers 

 are abundant and the insects are caught in large numbers. If a grasshopper has only 

 a small drop of coal oil on its body it will soon spread all over it and be fatal. 



Pea Weevil, Bruchus pisorum, L. — The Pea Weevil which for three years has 

 hardly been mentioned in correspondence, is evidently again increasing in numbers 



