29 



We may therefore take it for granted that all such applications as 

 can he made without destroying the vegetation on the land, will, as 

 a rule, prove ineffectual and be labor and money spent without 

 profit, so far as relief from the worms is concerned. 



Hard rolling after a top dressing of lime has been resorted to; also 

 numerous other applications, as spirits of tar, gas-lime, rape-cake, etc., 

 have been used, but with like results to those already mentioned. It 

 is proper to add here that there is some testimony which tends to 

 prove that salt is at least partially effectual on sandy soils. 



Guano is said to be obnoxious to them, and it is asserted that the 

 worms will leave the ground where it is used as a fertilizer ; this may 

 be correct, but I can find no proof of it experimentally ; it is probably 

 based on the worm's supposed delicacy. 



Hog manure is said to have saved a crop by being scattered over the 

 ground and plowed in before planting; and that where it was drop- 

 ped into hills these were protected while others were injured by the 

 worms. 



Another remedy, which has in it more promise of success 

 than any of those mentioned which are applicable to field crops, is by 

 rotating the crops with such vegetables as are obnoxious to them ; 

 that is to say, whenever the worms become troublesome, plant a crop 

 that is distasteful to them, and continue it at least two years. The 

 practical difficulty in this matter is to find a vegetable or plant which 

 will be distasteful to the worms, and at the same time profitable to the 

 cultivator. Loudon recommends mustard, as the acridity of its roots 

 renders it so distasteful to the worms that they will not eat it, and Dr. 

 Fitch quotes the following from a paper read before the Northampton- 

 shire Farming Society: "White mustard seed will protect the grain 

 from the wire-worm, and this fact I have demonstrated perfectly to 

 my own conviction. I first tried the experiment on half an acre, in the 

 center of a fifty acre field of fallow, which was much subject to the 

 wire-worm. The mustard seed being gathered, the whole field was 

 fallowed for wheat, and the half acre that had been previously crop- 

 ped with mustard seed was wholly exempt from the wire-worm ; the 

 remainder of the field was much injured. Not only was the half acre 

 thus preserved, but in the spring it was decidedly the most advanced 

 part of the crop, and the prosperous appearance which it presented, 

 caused me to repeat the experiment, by sowing three acres more of 

 mustard seed in the worst part of a field of forty-five acres, also much 

 infested with the wire-worm. The remainder of the field was sown 

 with early peas, which, with the mustard seed, was cleared in the 

 same week. The land was then plowed for wheat, and I had the 

 pleasure of noticing these three acres to be quite free from the worm, 

 and much superior in other respects to the other part of the field, 

 which suffered greatly. Thus encouraged by these results, I sowed 

 the next year a whole field of forty-two acres, which had never repaid 

 me for nineteen years, in consequence of nearly every crop being destroy- 

 ed by the wire-worm ; and I am warranted in stating that not a single 

 wire-worm could be found the following year, and the crop of wheat 

 throughout, which was reaped last harvest, was superior to any I had 

 grown for twenty-one years. I am therefore under a strong persua- 

 sion that the wire-worm may be successfully repelled and eradicated 



