PESTS OF TOBACCO. 245 



stems, heated to 125 R, will kill all the fleas it touches, 

 without injuring the plants. Until the practice of 

 using canvas coverings was adopted, this beetle was 

 more dreaded even than the horn worm. The flea 

 beetle at the North is frequently as destructive to half- 

 grown tobacco as to the potato plant, the lictle holes it 

 eats into the leaves ruining their quality, if not kill- 

 ing them outright. The potato crop is protected against 

 this pest by spraying with Bordeaux mixture,* and in 

 bad attacks the same remedy may be sprayed upon 

 tobacco. 



Cuhvorms (Fig. 60) are occasionally troublesome 

 to seed beds when they are made near old land infested 

 with them. Canvas covering is no protection against 

 them under such conditions. Prevention in this case, 

 by preparing the beds on new land some distance from 

 the old, is the best remedy. But cutworms are some- 

 times very destructive to the plants after tbey are set 

 out in the fields. They sever the stalks of the plants 

 beneath the surface. Their work is performed at night, 

 or in the cool of the morning, before the sun begins to 

 shine upon the ground, or late in the evening, after the 

 sun has set. They take refuge beneath the surface of 

 the ground when the sun is shining, where they may be 

 easily found lying in a coil. When grown, they are from 

 one and one-quarter to one and one-half inches long, 

 plump and greasy looking. The common, white grub is 

 familiar to all, and the traveling cutworm, Fig. 61, 

 may be even more destructive. 



Bordeaux mixture is made by combining six pounds of copper 

 sulphate and four pounds of quicklime, with water to make fifty gal- 

 lons. The copper sulphate is dissolved in water (hot, if prompt action 

 is desired) and diluted to about twenty-five gallons. The fresh lime is 

 slaked in water, diluted to twenty-five gallons, and strained into the 

 copper solution, after which tlie whole is thoroughly stirred with a 

 paddle. Both the copper and the lime mixtures may be kept in strong 

 solution as stock mixtures, but when combined should be promptly 

 used, as the Bordeaux mixture deteriorates on standing. 



