1855. 



NEW ENGLAND FARMER. 



15 



have yet had a turn of the " nightmare," and do 

 not intend to hereafter. Of course, every farmer 

 can understand the diflFerence between having 

 ready money and not having it ; and I presume 

 that " A Reader," with the i-est of us, would un- 

 derstand the " difference " between having a few 

 acres of our land mortgaged for money borrowed, 

 instead of having a mortgage of a few acres in our 

 pockets ; it would make all the " difference " in 

 the world with me. What I meant to show by 

 the mortgage plan was, that where the farmer 

 had bought a worn-out farm, and money was 

 wanted and could not be obtained readily by a 

 "sale" alone, the mortgage plan must be re- 

 sorted to. The farmer must see that he cannot 

 afford to let his land lie unimproved, and that 

 money should be had ; there should be no if ner 

 and about it ; for where there is a will to do there 

 can be a way provided. If this be the case, then 

 I am, for one, ready to stand and abide the issue. 



" Improving soils by shade ! " On this article 

 " A Reader " says : — " On this theory, cellar 

 bottoms ought to become rich, and apple tree 

 roots in grass land ought to grow all the better 

 for enjoying a shaded soil. Land covered for four 

 years with brush two feet deep, especially such as 

 would decay in half that time, or even land on 

 which flax is spread merely to rot, might be im- 

 proved thereby from the deposit of vegetable 

 matter, and the disengagement of gases conse- 

 quent upon even partial decomposition, without 

 giving any credit at all to ' shade.' Though I 

 have little faith that shade will ever be lugged up 

 and sold at ' fifty dollars a ton ' as a fertilizer," 

 &c. Very well : now I ask "A Reader," with 

 the readers of the Farmer, to turn to the weekly 

 Farmer of Sept. 30, or the monthly Farmer for 

 November 2, and give my article a fiiir reading 

 on " Shade," read your own " comments," and 

 then say if you think it a just and fair " criti- 

 cism." What I meant to show was, that "waste 

 lands" could be improved in the shortest manner 

 by growing trees, and that there was a principle 

 involved by growing trees, which rendered the 

 soil more or less productive. Has "A Reader" 

 proved, or attempted to prove, any thing to the 

 contrary? He has simply glided over it by say- 

 ing, if shade improves soils, then " cellar bot- 

 toms " ought to grow rich, and that land that 

 was covered with brush two feet deep for three or 

 four years, might be improved by the partial de- 

 composition of the brush and the retention of 

 gases, giving the "shade theory" the go by, 

 which is all very well. 



What I stated in my article on " shade," &c., 

 was, in substance, that a pile of rails or boards, 

 laying upon the ground for a year or two, the 

 soil under ttie pile would be greatly improved by 

 it. I do not stop to say whether this is done by 

 decomposition, gases, or anti-gases ; I only say 

 that such is the fact, as every observing farmer 

 knows. Has "A Reader " offered, or proved any 

 thing to the contrary ? My own idea is, that the 

 greatest amount of improvement to the soil under 

 a pile of brush, boards, or rails, comes from pro- 

 tection to the soil from hot suns and washing 

 rains. I may, however, be all wrong in this, or 

 I again may be right. 



A word or two more and I am done. As "A 

 Reader " has (he does not see fit to give us his 

 name,) taken the responsible position of " com- 



mentator," we suggest that he would give enough 

 of any article commented on, to enable the general 

 reader to undeistand the drift of the argument on 

 both sides of the question. In the second place, 

 I would give my own ideas in a plain, straight- 

 forward way, but never mind what others may 

 say. I much prefer to have your own " ideas," 

 independent of other people's, on this point, after 

 having made them stand by and abide the issue. 

 But to take a writer's article, pick one sentence 

 here and ridicule another idea there, is not just 

 the fair thing, for in that case any writer's ideas 

 might be made to appear " ridiculous," although 

 there may be no such intention on the part of the 

 critic. Yours truly, L. Durand. 



Derby, Ct., Nov., 1854. 



CANKER WORMS. 



A good opportunity is now presented, in our 

 immediate vicinity, of removing any doubts which 

 may still be entertained as to the habits of the 

 canker worm, that most destructive of all the in- 

 sects which infest our orchards and shade trees. 

 The manner in which they possess themselves of 

 what they devour with such voracious certainty, 

 and the eflBcacyof the process of preventing their 

 ravages by tarring the trunks of the trees, maybe 

 clearly seen in some of the orchards in Brookline, 

 where the work is now going on. Our attention 

 was called, a few mornings ago, to a scene of this 

 kind, which almost beggars description. The 

 ground around the trunks of the trees, within a 

 circle of two or three feet in diameter, was literal- 

 ly covered with the insects which had fallen in a 

 vain struggle to overcome the tarred barrier by 

 which the trees were surrounded. Millions of the 

 spoilers were writhing in the agonies of despair 

 and death. The mass of the invading army were 

 wingless females, who can only ascend by creep- 

 ing up the trunk. Here and there a flying male 

 was caught in the meshes set for his more helpless 

 companions. The trees of this orchard, and in- 

 deed of a wide belt of country running through 

 Cambridge and Brookline, including many noble 

 elms and other shade trees, were last summer and 

 the summer previous, completely stripped of their 

 foliage and fruit by these greedy worms, and re- 

 duced to withered shreds, looking as if they had 

 been scorched by fire. 



These destructive insects have been fully de- 

 scribed, and the remedies against their ravages 

 pointed out by Prof. Peok, in the papers of the 

 Massachusetts Agricultural Society, and by Dr. 

 Harris, in a treatise on insects injurious to vege- 

 tation, published by order of our Legislature. 

 Our farmers, however, either from faithlessness 

 in the prescribed remedies, or sln-iiiking from the 

 laborious care and watchfulness involved in the 

 application of them, have liitherto very much neg- 

 lected what they must now be satisfied would have 

 been a wise and perliaps wliolly effectual precau- 

 ion. A single orchard in this vicinity, which in- 

 I'ood seasons has produced from a thousand to fif- 

 teen luindred barrels of the best apples, has for 

 two or three years past been reduced, by these 

 merciless marauders, to a perfectly barren wilder- 

 ness. 



The canker-worms complete their devastation 

 about the middle of June, when they descend and 

 burrow in the earth to the depth of from three to 



