WAR ON CUTWORMS 159 



bountifully spread table, the beach, the 

 common crow. I am always interested in 

 the wise and quaint ways of this much- 

 maligned fellow creature, and I am glad to 

 relate a little incident told me by a practical 

 farmer in New Jersey. This farmer was by 

 no means a " bird crank," on the contrary, 

 he was as implacable a persecutor of other 

 birds as the most bloodthirsty enemy of our 

 little brothers could desire. 



" I learned in one lesson," said the farmer, 

 " to respect and even to value the crow, and 

 now I never allow one* to be shot," and he 

 went on to relate that he had one year a 

 plague of cutworms which got possession of 

 a cornfield and threatened to destroy it. He 

 was told that the only way to rid himself 

 of the pest was to go over the field every day 

 and wherever he saw a bit of corn cut off, to 

 dig out the worm and kill it. 



In desperation he started in his big corn- 

 field this almost hopeless undertaking. He 

 worked one day at it and " nearly broke his 

 back," as he said, and the next morning the 

 worms were as plentiful as ever. He began 

 seriously to contemplate abandoning the corn 



