Insects and Other Foes. — 129 



Rocky Mountain locust becomes a real plague in the West, 

 stripping whole sections of every vestige of green in short order. 

 Here at the East we sometimes suffer great annoyance by the 

 hordes of the red-legged grasshopper, but seldom considerable 

 real injury. Their natural enemies, especially blister beetles, 

 birds, and various mammals, prevent their excessive multiplica- 

 tion. In the garden we can keep them down pretty well by 

 giving chickens, ducks, hens, and turkeys a chance to fatten on 

 them. If this method is not practicable, or the grasshoppers are 

 too plentiful for the poultry set at them, we may possibly reduce 

 their numbers by driving them out in short flights. Several 

 persons, each provided with a tree-branch or switch, foliage left 

 on at the end, walk up and down through the garden, begin- 

 ning at one side, and with swinging switches gradually scare and 

 crowd the locusts towards the other side, and finally out and off 

 some distance. This may be repeated several times a day until 

 the period of danger seems to be past. Possibly a windrow or 

 windrows of old straw or rakings might be placed along outside 

 the garden, the grasshoppers driven in and unto them and 

 burned. One ol the most practical methods of protecting crops 

 from destruction by excessive numbers ot hoppers is by baiting 

 them with poisoned bran. Make a mixture of 100 pounds of 

 bran, three pounds of Paris green, two quarts ol old molasses, 

 adding a little water to make the mass stick well together. The 

 hoppers seem to prefer this mixture to green food. Put little 

 heaps of the poisoned bran all over the area to be protected, or 

 simply strew it between the rows of potatoes, corn, cabbage, 

 beans, etc., etc. Cut worms may possibly be poisoned by the 

 same means. 



Other Foes. — Moles, although living entirely on worms and 

 insects, and never destroying crops directly by eating, often, par- 

 ticularly in sandy and mucky soils, become a source of much 

 annoyance to the gardener by tunneling under the plant beds, 

 lifting out, and killing many young plants, indirectly by expo- 

 sure and drying up. Good traps may now be had at very reason- 

 able prices of almost every hardware dealer. When persistently 

 kept set according to directions which accompany each of these 

 traps, they will soon reduce the numbers of the burrowing pests. 



Rats, Mice, etc. — When troubling hot-beds, hot-houses, etc., 

 are also easily enough trapped or poisoned. Cheese crumbs are 

 a favorite bait for them ; but there is hardly anything that will 

 more surely entice the rodents than Sunflower seed. If a steel 

 trap is used to catch rats, a large piece of very thin muslin should 

 be covered over the trap when set, strewn with cheese crumbs, 

 sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, etc., and perseveringly kept set. 

 This will clear the premises of rats after awhile. Woodchucks 

 are frequently very troublesome to beans, and occasionally 

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