INJURIOUS INSECTS 



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those recommended for cabbage worms, and it is also subject 

 to diseases and parasites. 



Wire Worms or Drill Worms (Elater). Wire worms 

 cause damage by boring into potatoes and some seeds in 

 the ground. They are the larvae of a snapping or clicking 

 beetle, so called from the ease with which, if laid on their 

 backs, they spring into the air with a clicking noise. The 

 larvae are slender wirelike worms having a glassy, tough 

 skin of a yellowish or brownish color. The larval stage lasts 

 for two and possibly five years; it is therefore no small job to 



Fig. 45. Snapping beetle, OP wire worm, with larvae. 



clear a piece of land badly infested with the pest. Natu- 

 rally, wire worms live in grass land where the harm they do is 

 not apparent, but when such land is planted to corn or pota- 

 toes and the worms are thus deprived of their natural food 

 they may become very troublesome. 



Remedies. Late fall plowing is desirable for land 

 infested with wire worms, since it exposes and thus kills all 

 that are ready to pupate. By clean summer fallowing the 

 land one season the worms are starved out, if no plants what- 

 ever are permitted to grow on it. 



