78 ELEMENTARY AGRICULTURE 



grub or worm. The grub is a great eater and grows 

 very rapidly, as those of you who have watched the 

 young potato bugs grow can testify. It then hides 

 itself somewhere and goes into the resting state, the 

 pupa, from which it emerges a full-grown insect, 

 ready to lay eggs and repeat this cycle. Some insects, 

 as the potato bug, have legs in the "grub" stage, and 

 others, like the grasshopper, do not go into a resting 

 state at all but grow their wings as they hop about in 

 search of food. 



Leaf-Eating and Sap-Sucking Insects. For our 

 convenience we will divide insects into two classes 

 one class that eats the leaves and another class the 

 members of which are too small to eat leaves but large 

 enough to suck the sap of plants. 



How to Destroy Insects. Now, what can the 

 farmer do if his crop is attacked by insects? If he can 

 find out where these insects lay their eggs he can de- 

 stroy the eggs. If they lay them on weeds and rub- 

 bish he can destroy them by keeping fence rows clean 

 and fields free from weeds. If they lay them in the 

 ground in the fall he can plow the ground and freeze 

 them out. If they are leaf-eating insects he can spray 

 the crop with water containing paris green and poison 

 their food. If they are sap-sucking insects, like plant 

 lice, he can spray the trees or plants on which they 

 live with a mixture of kerosene and soap suds, which 

 will fill up the little breathing holes in the sides of 

 their bodies and kill them. At the close of this chapter 

 will be found formulas for spraying mixtures for 



