1847. J bisects Injurioics to Vegetation. 23 



covered can send up but a single set of shoots, and being attack- 

 ed by the fly, the whole perishes j but seed deeply buried can 

 send up a double set of" shoots; those first appearing are attacked 

 and destroyed; those which thereupon start directly from the seed 

 are never infested by the fly. Admitting the facts to be as set 

 forth, it amounts to this, that by deeply covering, the same quan- 

 tity of seed in reality produces two crops; one, which is speedily- 

 harvested by the fly; and the other, gathered at a later day by 

 human hands. To this procedure we have two objections. By 

 adopting it, you do nothing whatever towards destroying the in- 

 sect or frustrating it in the least in its operations. On the con- 

 trary, you aim to provide food for it. You cherish it. You in 

 effect say to it " be fruitful, multiply, and replenish the earth." 

 True, by giving it what it wants, it leaves us as much more. 

 But it is rather humiliating to us " lords of creation " to rear 

 crops "at the halves" and place ourselves in the rank of mere 

 tenants to so ignoble a landlord ! Again, this measure only shields 

 us against the autumnal attack. It does nothing against that of 

 the following spring. Nay, by providing so well for the first 

 generation, it tends to make the second generation more numerous, 

 and the spring attack consequently more severe. Thus much 

 upon the supposition that the facts are precisely as set forth by the 

 King William Farmer. That he sincerely believed them to be 

 correct, and that he was perfectly honest in the selection of the 

 specimens which he forwarded to Mr. Garnett, we do not in the 

 least doubt. Indeed the encomium which Mr. G. has written 

 upon the character of his friend, must forever place him above all 

 suspicions of insincerity or of any thing approaching to chicanery. 

 But our own observations impress upon us strongly the conviction 

 that he is in error in one most important point in his argument, 

 namely, that seed slightly covered, dies whenever its blades are 

 destroyed by the fly. It is only in an impoverished soil that it 

 thus dies; in a rich soil, as has been already stated, its vitality 

 continues, its roots are so well surrounded with nutriment that they 

 readily sustain it, and its first shoots being destroyed, it sends up 

 a second set which grow unharmed. It thus performs the same 

 operation which the King William Farmer contends it can only 

 do when deeply buried. Our specimen, from which the drawing 

 (fig. A,) was taken, plainly shows this fact. The illustration is 

 an exact copy from nature, of two shoots which were separated 

 from a tuft of similar ones, all growing from one shallow cov- 

 ered seed; and in every infested field which we have examined, 

 myriads of similar specimens might have been gathered, whilst 

 commonly only on knolls and other barren or dry parts of the fields 

 were the plants found to be wholly destroyed, as they were repre- 

 sented in the figures of the American Farmer. A fertile soil there- 



