148 WHAT I KNOW OF FAKMING. 



only immediate causes but the caterpillar and other 

 vermin are, in my view, our more potent, though 

 remoter, afflictions. Not less than four times within 

 the last sixteen years have our trees been covered 

 with nests and worms ; and I have seen whole or- 

 chards stripped of nearly every leaf till they were 

 as bare (of every thing but caterpillars) in July as 

 they should have been in December. After the 

 scourge had passed, the trees reclad themselves with 

 leaves ; but they grew old under that visitation faster 

 in one year than they would have done in ten of 

 healthful fruit-bearing; and they are now prema- 

 turely gray and moss-covered because of the terrible 

 infliction. 



I lay down the general proposition that no man 

 who harbors caterpillars has any moral right to 

 Apples that each grower should be required to 

 make his choice between them. Slovenly farmers 

 say, " O there are so many of them that I cannot kill 

 half so fast as they multiply." Then I say, cut down 

 and burn up the trees you can best spare, until you 

 have no more left than you can keep clear of worms. 



If it were the law of the land that whoever allowed 

 caterpillars to nest and breed in his fruit-trees should 

 pay a heavy fine for each nest, we should soon be 

 comparatively clear of the scourges. In the absence 

 of such salutary regulation, one man fights them 

 with persistent resolution, only to see his orchard 

 again and again invaded and ravaged by the pests 

 hatched and harbored by his careless neighbors. He 



