122 Effective Farming 



before the corn plants are above the ground, hinders the ants 

 from transferring the lice to the roots of the corn. 



Wire-worm. Another pest of corn is the wire-worm. 

 These are the larvae of click beetles. They damage the corn 

 by eating the seed in the ground and by boring and eating the 

 stems and roots of the young plants. The larvae of different 

 species vary in length from one-half to one and one-half inches. 

 The eggs are laid in sod land and the insects require from three 

 to five years to reach the adult stage. When corn follows grass 

 in a field that is badly infested with the wire- worms, the dam- 

 age to the corn is likely to be great. One remedy is to keep the 

 land in grass only a short time, perhaps one or two years, as 

 the worms are always more numerous in old sod fields than in 

 those that have been in grass only a short time. Fall plowing 

 also helps to lessen the numbers of both the beetles and the 

 larvae. 



Cutworms. Often cutworms are troublesome in corn 

 fields. They are larvae of many different kinds of moths. 

 During the summer the moths lay eggs on grass leaves and the 

 larvae soon hatch and feed on the green leaves. During the 

 winter they remain in the ground and in the spring come out 

 and feed on growing plants, cutting off the plants just above 

 the ground. They are found in large numbers in fields that 

 have been in grass a long time. Thus one way to control 

 these worms is to practice a rotation with grass kept on the 

 ground only one or two years. Fall plowing is an aid, as it 

 exposes them to the winter weather and kills the vegetation 

 on which they feed in the early spring. On small areas the 

 worms can be poisoned, but this method is not practicable 

 on large areas. A mixture made according to the formula, 

 forty pounds of wheat bran, two quarts of molasses, and one 

 pound of paris green, is moistened with water and a teaspoonful 

 placed near each hill of corn. The molasses attracts the worms 

 and, if the mixture is eaten, the poison kills them. 



White-grub. The larvae of May beetles, or June bugs, 



