PREVENTIVE MEASURES. 



There are no loiown remedies for the joint- worm, but there are 

 several preventive measures that are not impracticable and are 

 reasonably efficient. 



In the midst of the outbreak in Virginia, pre\'iouslv mentioned, a 

 "Joint-worm Convention" was held at Warrenton, in that State, to 

 de\ase means for controllino; this pest. This body recommended a 

 better system of farming, the use of guano and other fertilizers to pro- 

 mote a rapid growth and an early ripening of the grain, and the burning 

 of the stubble, all of which are as advisable to-day as they were at that 

 time. The most serious ravages are observetl on thin or impoverished 

 soils, especially along the margins of the fields infested. Anything, 

 then, that tends to add vigor to the young growing grain will constitute 

 a preventive measure. Burning the stubble, where tliis is practicable, 

 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, tlie 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 larvae so that few, if an}", would develop adults 

 the following spring. In case of bedding for horses, it seems quite 

 probable that if any larvae at all survived the thrashing machine, the 

 heat from the decomposing manure would develop them prematurely. 

 However, there has been no experimentation exactly along these 

 lines, and according to a press bulletin" b}' Prof. R. 11. Pettit, of 

 the Michigan Agricultural College, serious injuries have followed 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 c{uite different from that of allowing the stable 

 manure to accumulate during the wanter and applying it in the spring 

 elsewhere than to the wheat fields, or even of apphang it to wheat 

 fields before plowing, months after the larvae surviving the effects of 

 the stal)le had developed and escaped. The one might destroy all or 

 nearl}^ all larvae 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 larvae present from an old field, move it 



« Mich. Agr. Col. Exp. Sta., Press Bull. No. 15. . The Wheat Joint-Worm. 

 [Cir. G6] 



