Poultry as Insecticides. 79 



of the most dreaded enemies of the onion-crop, and one whose 

 extensive ravages have driven onion-cultivation from many lo- 

 calities in our northern states. Thick planting, with the expec- 

 tation that after the fly pest has helped himself to a portion of 

 the young plants there may be left a proportion sufficient for 

 a good crop, has not proved to be a remedy, for the habit of 

 the fly is generally to deposit her eggs in every onion until 

 they are exhausted. The result, therefore, of the thick plant- 

 ing, after the maggot has done its work, is to leave the beds 

 with rows that have alternate patches of utter blank and extra- 

 thick spaces: on the latter the plants are too near together to 

 make onions of fair market-size possible. The general prac- 

 tice where beds are badly infested with the maggot has been 

 to give up the location and transfer the raising of the crop to 

 some other portion of the farm. As land suitable for raising 

 onions in the quality of the soil, freedom from stones and 

 level character is not very common on the average. New Eng- 

 land farm, it is oftentimes the case that the tiny insect con- 

 quers and the crop is driven from the farm. Having this 

 trouble on my own farm, while preparing to abandon one of 

 my beds, located on excellent onion-land, and to start it in a 

 new location, I heard an old market-gardener state that he had 

 had no serious trouble from the maggot since he had tried the 

 hen-and-chickens remedy. On being asked to explain, he 

 stated that it was his practice to confine a hen with chickens 

 on each acre of his onion-ground, soon after the plants ap- 

 peared above the ground ; the hen to be confined in a small 

 coop which allowed the chickens easy access in and out. The 

 chickens, he stated, soon got track of the fly and devoured it 

 while it was depositing its eggs Last season I tried the experi- 

 ment on my own farms, locating three broods on about as 

 many acres, putting in one in about the middle of each. As 

 to the result, though I am not able to report with the accuracy 

 of a scientific expert, testifying only to what I really saw, yet, 

 as a matter of fact, on all three of the acres my onions are 

 much less injured than they had been the year previous, 



