294 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



a week until the tops fire fully grown. It was found on the 

 Wisconsin University farm, where the bugs fairly swarmed, 

 that potatoes, rightly cared for, could be protected by haud- 

 picking for less than $5 per acre. I think this can be done in 

 any place. 



If the bugs are neglected for a time until the larva? abound 

 on the vines, then there is no remedy but poison. But if one 

 neglects his field so as to render poison necessary, the work 

 will probably cost him more than the hand-picking would have 

 cost, if rightly applied. Besides, poison must kill some bene- 

 ficial insects as well as the injurious ; and many people object 

 to buying potatoes on which poison has been used. Probably 

 no injury is done to the potato by the poison used upon the 

 vine, but it will be well for the dealer to be able to say that 

 no poison has been near the potatoes he offers for sale. 



A man can protect himself in spite of his careless neigh- 

 bors ; but the work is much easier when all act together. 

 One acre of potatoes neglected will raise bugs enough to 

 stock a township. It should be an indictable offence for a 

 man to plant potatoes and then suffer them to become simply 

 a nuisance to his neighbors. He can kill the bugs with poison, 

 if in no other way ; and he should be compelled by law to do 

 so, before they scatter in the fall. The accounts we have of 

 such immense multitudes of bugs moving in the fall, simply 

 show that many farmers, discouraged by the multitude of bugs, 

 have given up their crops without a struggle, — have fed a 

 multitude of pests to annoy themselves and other people the 

 succeeding year. It is useless to talk of "starving these bugs 

 out" by planting only early potatoes. They will eat egg- 

 plants, bell-peppers, wild solanums and, when hard pushed, 

 will try the tomato-vines. I have seen them feeding vigor- 

 ously upon the tender leaves of the mullein and pasture-thistle. 

 Doubtless many other plants help them out when the potato 

 tribe fails. The statement that the full-grown bugs never eat 

 seems strange to one who has seen them eating all the plants 

 here named, and also gnawing away at the potatoes left in the 

 field, especially upon those turned green by exposure to the 

 sun while growing. 



It is evidently more advantageous than ever before to raise 

 as many potatoes as possible upon the acre. It will not pay, 



