ON Root CROPS. 113 



Hie cultivation of Root Crops is receiving increasing attention, 

 and in some departments of it the products bid fair to exceed in 

 value almost every other product of the garden or field. Three 

 hundred acres of the best land in Danvers are devoted to the onion. 

 It is painful to learn, as we do from Mr. Proctor's letter, appended 

 to this report, that there has this year been a comparative failure. 

 Had an average crop been obtained, of 400 bushels to the acre, the 

 yield in that town would have been 120,000 bushels. The Indian 

 Corn crop, in Danvers, a few years since, was valued by the town 

 Assessors at $8,357 only ; while the onions, this year, at fifty cents 

 a bushel, with the success which has generally attended, would have 

 been worth $60,000. This is nearly twice the value of all the 

 English and other hay raised in the same town in the year 1844. 



It will be seen by the letter referred to, that, owing to the heat 

 or some other cause, the onion louse has this year made its appear- 

 ance. This is greatly to be regretted. No conceivable drought or 

 heat is so much to be dreaded, as an army of insects. The destruc- 

 tion of the tribes that occasionally assail our crops, is a subject of 

 sufficient importance to call forth the united energies of the Agri- 

 cultural Societies throughout the world. Let premiums of sufficient 

 value be offered to naturalists at home and abroad, to induce them 

 to turn their attention to this subject. It is no place here for more 

 than a hint. But the N. E. Farmer of 27th Oct. informs us that 

 on a farm in Michigan, near Fort Huron, during the past summer, 

 the army worm, so called, has " marched through field after field, 

 in solid phalanx, devouring everything in their way. Where a crop 

 of 5000 bushels of oats was expected, there will not be a single 

 bushel. One tenant was driven from his house, and the owner, on 

 the opposite side of Black river, was able to keep possession of his 

 dwelling only by attacking them on the bridge and sweeping thera 

 into the river." And the destruction of whole fields of turnips by 

 the louse in the county of Essex, is a sufficient admonition to pre- 

 pare for such an insect invasion as certainly seems to threaten a 

 famine of SDme of our indispensable crops. The undersigned would 

 respectfully but earnestly suggest the importance of printing Dr. 

 Harris's treatise upon insects, in the present number of the trans- 

 actions. 



[' One crop only has been entered with the Committee for premium. 

 This is by Francis Dodge, of Danvers. The crop is one of Carrots, 

 : 16 



