STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 53 



subsoil, on Svliich water would uot stand. He never mulched on 

 ground sloping to the north. Last spring his vines looked well, hut he 

 bad no crop, except where the snow had drifted and made winter pro- 

 tection. He strongly recommended the Duchess or Countess De Har- 

 icout, as a farmer's berry, and that it would remain a long time bear- 

 ing on same grounds. 



Mr. Labbitt said he arranged his bed of strawberries, so that he can 

 build low fences to accumulate the drift from the plowed lands. 

 Had one bed from which lie had picked berries for seven years under 

 this treatment. 



Air. Pearce remarked, that he had plowed up all his Wilsons, and 

 would never plant anv more of them. He wants a berry that will 

 stand the winter and sell at the highest price. He said that close to 

 market, he could make more money off the Crescent Seedling, than any 

 other berry. He had a record of a yield at the rate of -160 bushels per 

 acre. He got 15 cents per quart for Crescent Seedling by the crate, 

 when Wilson's were retailing at 8 cents. The Seth Eoyden, he had 

 found to grow large, ot fine flavor and a good market berry. To guard 

 against winter-killing, he selects level hind and plants so that the 

 crown is a little lower than the surface, and in cultivating, takes care 

 not to cover with earth. His soil a leaf mold, originally now in culti. 

 vation twenty years, always mulches. 



DESTRUCTIVE INSKCTS. 



BY R. J. MEXDilNH \LL. 



Our " hugs " are very much like our hesetting sins, no matter how thoroughly 

 we may think we have subdued them one year, on the first appearance of their 

 vegetahle temptations the succeeding year, tliere they are again in full force, 

 bugs, borers, potatoe beetles, onion flies, currant worms, cabbage worms, cut 

 worms— the whole rank and file of the crawling and flying army, and nothing re- 

 mains for us but continual warfare, direct and strategetic I Occasionally, it is 

 true, the familiar form of some pest almost or quite disappears from our fields or 

 gardens, but almost before we have time to congratulate ourselves on the fact, we 

 are confronted by a new recruit, with whose tactics we are not acquainted, and 

 which may prove a worse foe than ihe one it supplanted, or whose number it at 

 least made good. At all events our weapons, so to speak, need never rust for lack 

 of objects upon which to use thorn. This seems a rather discouraging view of the 

 ,case, but it is the true one. 



We must accept the '* insect factor " among the expense items in the production 

 of our crops, and that we are gradually coming to do so, I need only instance the 

 cost of raising a crop of potatoes, in which tiie item of Paris green or some simi- 

 lar application, as a remedy for the Colorado beetle, is set down as one of the 

 necessary expenses as much as the planting, ploughing and digging. And except 



