THE ONION MAGGOT. 195 



to use a plough or any implement on that land and then take 

 it to another piece where you are going to have your onions 

 "without first perfectly cleaning it. The spores of the fungi 

 that cause smut in onions, which are invisible to us, can be 

 taken from one field to another, and are just as sure to be 

 propagated as the seed of anything else. Therefore, if you 

 have smut on a piece of ground (which is probably the blight 

 to which the gentleman alludes), stop growing onions there 

 for several years ; lay it down to grass, and raise your onions 

 somewhere else. And, as I said before, be sure not to let an 

 implement be taken from one field to another, or you will 

 carry the spores or seed of the fungi with it, and your other 

 laud will be impregnated with the disease. The wash from 

 high land where these spores exist will carry them to lower 

 land, so that you must exercise great caution in this matter. 

 These are the only two blights that I have in my mind. 



Question. What is the remedy for the onion maggot? 



Mr. Ware. The maggot has been and probably will be the 

 great curse of the onion grower. I know of but one remedy. 

 I will say here, that I believe, of all men in the universe, there 

 is no class who are so willing to unbosom themselves and tell 

 all they know, and perhaps a little more, as farmers, and I 

 believe that it is to that we owe, in a great measure, the 

 trouble I have spoken of with regard to marketing. There 

 is a great deal of information circulated by the reports of such 

 meetings as these, and by the transactions of the various 

 agricultural societies. In order to get a premium from the 

 agricultural society in Essex County, for instance, farmers 

 must make a clean breast of the methods by which they pro- 

 duce their crops, and that becomes public property. The 

 formers in Maine, Vermont and New Hampshire have thus 

 learned how to raise onions and other crops as we do in Essex 

 County. Therefore, our market is cut off. You here in 

 Worcester have learned how to do these things just about as 

 well as we in Essex County, and therefore we can no longer 

 supply your market with vegetables. However, I will say 

 that I believe I have discovered a remedy for the onion mag- 

 got. I have never said much about it, but I believe it is a 

 good thing. In the first place, the onion maggot is produced 

 by a fly resembling somewhat our house-fly, but smaller. You 



