INSECTS AND DISEASES 93 



and leaving behind them only the stubs and roots. 

 None of my onion patches have ever suffered from 

 the depredations of cutworms. In fact, clean culture 

 and an intensive system of gardening which calls for 

 continued cropping, following one crop closely with 

 another to the very end of the season, have banished 

 cutworms, grubs and wireworms almost entirely from 

 my fields. 



To Bulletin No 120 of the New York state 

 experiment station, Geneva, I am indebted for the 

 following life history of the onion cutworm: "It is 

 probable that, on the onion fields at least, the eggs are 

 mostly laid in the late fall upon the weeds and other 

 debris remaining upon uncultivated spots in the fields, 

 along ditch borders and fences, or on adjoining high- 

 lands. From these highlands the weeds and eggs are 

 borne upon the fields by the high waters of early 

 spring and furnish starting points for the spread of 

 the young worms. These also advance from the bor- 

 ders of the field and from the ditch banks. Some of 

 the eggs may hatch in the fall, and the young worms 

 feed for a time before going into winter quarters in 

 the ground, and some of the moths probably remain 

 alive though dormant during the winter and resume 

 egg laying in the spring. The small size of the 

 worms, however, when they are first seen feeding 

 in the spring, and their occurrence in such numbers 

 on the gray soils which receive so much of the wash 

 of "the uplands and in scattered spots in the fields 

 where the water-borne debris is found, would seem 

 to indicate that they reach these places in the egg 

 form upon the weeds, hatch early in the spring, and 

 spread soon to the onions. They begin to feed early 

 in May, and when first noticed (May 12) they were 

 from one-tenth to one-half grown, and were from 

 one-eighth to one-fourth of an inch in length. They 



