15 
taken root, and then digs up and destroys those first set. His new 
field is then stocked with fresh plants, which have never been in 
contact with seriously infested crowns. Too much care can not be 
taken to free the plants from dirt, in which the beetle might pos- 
sibly be hibernating, and to shake and search them for specimens 
hiding in the fohage and the rubbish about the crowns. It is a 
very unusual thing to find a borer in any of these plants during 
the first or second year; not one in fifty thousand plants, accord- 
ing to Mr. Endicott’s estimate. 
It is a general practice throughout the strawberry region to plow 
up a field after two crops have been taken from it, planting the 
ground for a season to some other crop, usually to corn. These 
two methods will probably serve to keep the crown-borer well in 
hand. I do not think the process of ridging or hilling up the plants 
has been tried in Southern Illinois, although I have been told that 
it is a favorite practice east. ‘There, however, the crown-borer is 
not yet known to occur. 
In short, unless experiments should prove the worth of poisons, 
‘applied in fall or early spring, the main reliance must be placed 
upon occasional rotation, and the planting of new fields at a little 
distance from the old, under conditions to make the transfer of the 
pest impossible. 
Perhaps the plan of ridging or hilling up the plants will be found 
useful in some instances. 
In conelusion, I will only add that we should bear in mind the 
fact that the injuries done by the crown-borer are really much less 
serious than has been generally supposed, for the reason that it 
has been confounded by horticulturists with other equally destruc- 
tive but very different insects, the strawberry root-worms. 
From these, however, it may be easily distinguished, notwith- 
standing its close superficial resemblance, by the fact that it is 
altogether footless, while the root-worms all have three pairs of 
distinct jointed legs on the segments next following the head. 
