110 GARDENING WITH BRAINS ^ 



the cutworm. He has some mysterious, mali- 

 cious instinct which guides him infallibly to 

 those spots in the garden where you least want 

 him. I am not joking; it is an actual fact. Out 

 of about one hundred and forty precious romaine 

 plants I transplanted the other day, forty-five 

 have already been destroyed. Near by is a row 

 of salad plants by the hundred, where forty-five 

 wouldn't be missed; but not one of these has 

 been hurt. 



In another part of the garden there is a cucum- 

 ber hill on which only two seeds came up, 

 strange to say. One of these fell a victim to a 

 cutworm this morning. (I got him!) The 

 adjoining hill had twenty young squash plants. 

 They, of course, were all right. There's safety 

 in numbers. Can you imagine anything more 

 cowardly than a cutworm? Let us draw the 

 foot over him over any worm, in fact, except 

 the angleworm; he's harmless in fact, he is 

 useful; he shows us where the soil is rich; he 

 helps to make it ready for use; Darwin was so 

 struck by his beneficence that he wrote a book 

 about him; he is good for fishing, and in Chinese 

 restaurants he adorns certain varieties of chop 

 suey. Why not? On Berlin menus I have seen 

 the word Maikafersuppe soup made of what 

 we call June bugs. 



Cutworms might make themselves useful, and 

 welcome, too, in the garden if they would help 

 us thin out plants. I have a hundred-foot row 



