INSECTS. 185 



subterraneous feeders, as you have destroyed their natural 

 stores, must now feed upon your plants, or perish. Fall 

 ploughing will do much towards lessening their numbers ; but 

 in some instances enough will escape to injure materially the 

 sprouts of Indian corn, and many other plants in your garden; 

 they seldom if ever injure potatoes, beets or carrots, or do 

 much damage to a crop of oats. It has been remarked by one 

 writer, that whenever you have reason to expect these insects 

 are in your flax ground or garden, sow the land with fine salt, 

 broad cast, at the rate of two bushels to the acre. This will 

 effectually destroy them, and as a manure, will more than repay 

 the cost. This remedy, it may be observed, may be judiciously 

 applied, when we have reason to conclude the egg, or larva, 

 wiiich produces the worm, has been deposited, or the worm so 

 produced, actually exists in the ground from which you would 

 raise any of those crops liable to its devastations. But the 

 better and more certain remedy is, when circumstances will 

 admit, to put the ground in such condition previous to commit- 

 ting your seed to it, that the grass-hopper, or other winged 

 insect, will not probably deposit its egg therein ; or if it is al- 

 ready deposited, to destroy its vivific principle. The surest 

 way to effect this, is to plough it thoroughly just previous to 

 the connnencement of the winter frosts. And then early in 

 the spring plough it again, and thus prevent every thing from 

 ^-egetating until you commit your seed to the ground. With 

 such management, the winter frosts will generally destroy the 

 worm or the larva, that may have been deposited in the fall be- 

 fore ; and as no green thing makes its appearance in the spring 

 previous to the vegetation of the plant you wish to cultivate, 

 the winged insect will seek some other place to deposit its egg ; 

 and before the worm thus produced becomes of sufficient mag- 

 nitude and strength to injure it, the texture of the plant will 

 probably become so firm as to withstand its attacks, and finally 

 out-grow its ravages. 



An antidote consistent with the interest of every farmer, or 

 one who cultivates the earth, against the ravages of those in- 

 sects which commit their depredations principally upon plants 

 when in the first stages of their growth, is, to so fertilize the 

 soil and prepare it for the reception of the seed, that it may 

 vegetate rapidly and vigorously, that it may thereby the 

 sooner acquire that strength and solidity which tends to forti- 

 fy it, in some measure, against their attacks. Common ©bserv- 

 ation will teach us that the more feeble and unhealthy the plant 

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