'^ MORALS OF ELMS, WORMS 109 



bulb that stands in its way ! I have seen it with 

 my own eyes. In neglected gardens I have often 

 seen flowering plants and vegetables pitilessly 

 pierced, smothered, and strangled by this vege- 

 table Turk. 



Tragedies of this sort by the million are daily 

 and nightly enacted over and under ground in 

 our gardens. Every morning the first thing I 

 do is to see what harm has been done by the 

 cutworms. They are not so big as the ''worm" 

 Fafner, but they do a great deal of harm. 

 Their modus operandi consists in cutting off 

 a baby plant just where it comes out of the 

 ground. The worm eats a part of the stem or 

 leaf — its appetite is not big — ^but the plant is 

 dead — its leaves lie prone; and that is your 

 chance. They betray the presence of the cul- 

 prit. Dig down an inch and you generally find 

 him. If you don't he'll murder another plant 

 before to-morrow morning. I have known a 

 cut worm to bite through the big stem of a young 

 tomato just transplanted. 



MALICIOUS WORMS 



All these things might be overlooked were it 

 not for a diabolical trait which differentiates 

 the cutworm from other burrowers. There are 

 plenty of them — among them the yellow wire 

 worm and the white grubs. But these eat the 

 roots, and they eat them where the plants are 

 abundant, the more the merrier. Not so with 



