1876.] 



THE LANCASTER FARMER. 



d47 



There is au "old saw" to the effect that, 

 "All work and no play will make Jaek a dull 

 boy," and per contra we may state, llial all 

 play and no work, is just as sure to make him 

 a wortliless boy. Between these two extremes, 

 however, their lii'S a wiile Held for intellectual 

 and physical culture, and on a i)roper manipu- 

 lation of this lield, nuich of the health, con- 

 tent and success of lite depends. Farmers, 

 in tlieir relations to their children, perliaps 

 make tlie same mistakes in discipline that 

 other classes do, and one i;rand mistake, which 

 only is seen Ion;; years afterward — if ever it is 

 seen at all — is innot having snllicient regard 

 to the fully developed man and woman, in the 

 boy and the girl. Perliai)S there are few 

 parents wlio have urown-up sons and daugh- 

 ters, pursuing the duties of life upon theirown 

 responsibility, who do not bitterly regret tlie 

 course they liave pursued towards them in 

 .their youtli. Instead of ailing from a high 

 moral principle, and for the ultimate welfare of 

 their children, they may have been inlluencedby 

 a blind impulse, and with no higher motive than 

 theirown personal comfort and convenience. 

 Instead of reposing eonlidenee in their children 

 and according to them the courtesies that they 

 have freely acc(uded to the children of their 

 neighbors, they, perhai)s, have been self-ex- 

 acting, domineering, fretful and suspicions. 

 Instead of making them " partnersof their toil, 

 their feeling and their fame," they may have 

 only been careful to crush out every feeling of 

 independent enterprise, and to impress upon 

 tliem the al)solutene.ss of their subordinate 

 condition. Instead of affording them oppor- 

 tunities for mental culture, for recreations and 

 foramusements, they may have subjected them 

 to incessant toil, to iniellectual denial, and to 

 dogmatic gloominess. Under such circum- 

 stances as these, and less excessive than these, 

 it would not b(; surprising that they should 

 tire of the farm or desire to break away from 

 parental restraint. 



But it sometimes happens that parents de- 

 fer too much to their children, especially when 

 they have grown to maidiood and womanhood, 

 have acquired a little worldly knowledge and 

 have become restive under the toils which are 

 incidental to tlie farmer's life. Having been 

 tiiemselves deprived of the benetitsofan early 

 school education, they perhaps fail to compre- 

 hend what a true education means. Learninij 

 does not necessarily carry icixdom with it ; that 

 is the result of experience. Washington was 

 a wise man, but in learning he was inferior to 

 many of his subordinates in the army and the 

 government. These children, tlien, po.ssessing 

 that "little learning" which "is a dangerous 

 thing," ofien succeed in infusing tlieir discon- 

 tent into the minds of their parents, exciting 

 them to exchange the "dull monotony" of a 

 rural life, for the easier and more genteel occu- 

 pations of the town, which often proves a sad 

 mistake indeed. 



Reference was made in the discussion to a 

 simple sect of rural Christians, who discarded 

 or discouraged all school learning as sinful, 

 and yet are prosperous, contented and happy ; 

 illustrating that "if ignorance is bliss it is folly 

 to be wise ;" but this contented and prosper- 

 ous condition is by no means the result of ig- 

 norance. It is owing to a rigid discipline 

 which they voluntarily inii)osed upon them- 

 selves long, years ago, and the results of their 

 self-denials " have been the heritage of their 

 posterity. It is because they have been true 

 to the fundamental principles of their moral 

 organization and have transmitted fewer un- 

 stable and evil tendencies to their children. 

 With the same persistent, self-denying moral 

 culture, a higher degree of intellectual culture 

 would not effect a detrimental change in their 

 social characters. But with all this self-denial 

 in the one direction, it does not necessarily 

 follow that they are entirely perfect in another. 

 The pride of simplicity niay be as objection- 

 able as the i)ride of intelligence. 



To keep their boys on the farm, then, the 

 farmer \\\\\ be greatly assisted by recognizing 

 their manhood in their early youth, and affonl- 

 ing them all the rational "aids that arc neecs- 

 sjiry for a proper development of that man- 



hood. They should.have seasons of recreation 

 and seasons of labor, and both should be 

 adapted to their mental and physical condi- 

 tions. The farmer, tlie farm and farm life 

 should be represented as the »f }jhis ultra of 

 man's social condilion on eartli, and this 

 should not be inculcated as merely an empty 

 lirotession, but as a living and ever-abiding 

 truth.— Ed. 



THE WORM SNAKE. 



"Mil. Editor : I read with much interest a 

 paragraph in your i)aiier of the 25th inst., 

 wherein an account is given of a supiiosed 

 ' snake ' seen by a friend of your Bucks 

 county correspondent. You say in a note 

 that a similar 'snake' had been seen some 

 time previously in Connecticut. I was walk- 

 ing with my wife a few days since, when my 

 attention was called to what appeared to be a 

 'snake,' about two feet long, crossing a lawn 

 gravel walk. My wife, who has a horror of 

 the genus 'sarpint, ' ran off with considerable 

 trepidation, I remained, however, to examine 

 the reptile, and was greatly surjirised to find, 

 as described by your corresiiondent, that it 

 was composed of myriads of small grey worms, 

 each about a sixteenth of an inch in length. 

 The form of combination was precisely that of 

 a snake — small towards the head, larger in 

 the middle, and tapering to a jioint at the 

 tail. The worms .seemed to be crossed, inter- 

 twined, and heaped upon each other, but the 

 entire mass moved steadily forward. I have 

 since learned that several of these '.snakes' 

 have been seen since by a neighbor, who said 

 that they were the 'army worm,' and so 

 called because of their movements, bearing a 

 fancied resemblance to a column on the march. 

 Can it be jiossible that this dreaded i)est of the 

 (!otton-field has appeared among usV" — CarrnU 

 S. Ti/son, Plimnixvillc, Pa., in Germantown 

 Teleyraph, Auyuat 20, 1875. 



[We expect to hear from Professor Riley, 

 State Entomologist of Missouri, as to the 

 name and nature of the worms forming this 

 singular combination. The "army worm" 

 does not confine itself to cotton growing States, 

 but has made its appearance in several western 

 States, and is known to feed on other growing 

 crops than that of cotton. It may turn out 

 that this is really that much-dreaded worm. 

 —Ed.] 



The phenomenon of the "Worm-Snake" 

 has occurred so often both in America and 

 Europe, and the records have been so numer- 

 ous, that it is rather surprising so little should 

 be known about them by the writers of the 

 foregoing paragraphs, which have been coined 

 by other papers without comment. 



During the past ten or twelve years Prof. 

 Cope has read two or three papers on the sub- 

 ject before the Phil. Academtj of Natural <b'ct- 

 cnces, which have been published in its pro- 

 ceedin(js. During the period above named, at 

 least half a dozen of those "worm-snakes" 

 have been seen in Lancaster county, and three 

 of them within the limits of Lancaster city. 



In reply to a correspondent from Mount- 

 ville, Lancaster county, we published a paper 

 on the subject in the columns of the Lanaistcr 

 Inijuirer, in its issue of .July 9, 1870, which 

 was subsequently rei)ublislied in the Lax- 

 caster Farmer, if wc are not mistaken. 

 Mr. .J. Stauffer has also published one or two 

 papers on the same insect in the Daihj Ex- 

 preas, of Lancaster, Pa. In the month of Sep- 

 tember, 187:i, we confined about one hundred 

 of these worms or larva- in a gla.ss jar with 

 moist earth, and they formed a procession 

 within the jar, moving round in a circle for a 

 day or two, and finally disappeared beneath 

 the surface ; but of these only one or two 

 specimens were lired to the imuyo state — ow- 

 ing, perhaps, to the imfavorable condition of 

 the soil— small gnat-like in.sects, having a 

 dusky color, clear wings, and the body one- 

 sixteenth of an inch in lengtli. These tlies 

 made their escape, or were lost. Within a 

 week afterwards, in walking from Mount .Joy 

 to Marietta, towards evening we met a swarm 

 of small flies gamboling in the air along 



the road side , and on cai)turing some 

 some of them we found .a close resendjlance 

 between them and those We liad bred. We 

 herewith reproduce our paiier of 1870, and in 

 addition assure the aiiprehensive reader that 

 these in.sects are, so far as we know, entirely 

 harmless, and that they are not the "army 

 worm," (Lewania unipuncta) which is a noc- 

 turnal Lcpidopierous insect, of a depredating 

 family: 



" (Jn the 17th of June last, an arm;/ of these 

 very peculiar I)iPT";Rovslarvie wasdiscovercd 

 by Dr. A. K. Hohrer, of Mountville, in his 

 garden, shaping its course, as he thought, to- 

 wards one of ills rose bushes. Tlie.se insects 

 come up out of the ground in almost countless 

 number.s, and migrate to other quarters, in a 

 long line, resembling a slimy sort of rope, or 

 serpeid, adhering together and covered by a 

 mucus, which is supposed to protect their 

 delicate bodies from the rays of the sun, and 

 probably against other dangers. They belong 

 to the family Trpui.nxK, which includes the 

 various species of the Crane-flies, gnats, and 

 mosquitoes, and to the order Diptkha, which 

 embraces aU of the two-winged flies. Com- 

 l)aratively little was known of these insects 

 in this country until a very recent period, and 

 so few are the opportunities to make personal 

 observations ujion them by practical entomo- 

 logists, that much of their history remains 

 still undevelojied. They were, however, ob- 

 .served on the continent of Europe, by Gaspard 

 Schwenfelt, as early as the year 1603. In 1715 

 .Jonas Ramus mentions the same phenomenon. 

 Much superstiti<m was attached to the appear- 

 ance of these insect larvse, liy the peasantry 

 in the districts in which they occurred, be- 

 lievini: that it indicated a bad harvest if they 

 moved toward theinountains,butif they moved 

 toward the valh'ys or plains, the sign was a 

 good one. In Norway the.se moving ma.sses 

 of larv;e were called the ornw-drrK/, and when 

 the peasants met one, they threw down their 

 belts or waistcoats on the ground in advance 

 of it. If the moving ('olumn passed over the 

 obstacles, it was a good sign ; but if it turned 

 around them, it was regarded as a bad omen. 



"The .same phenomenon was observed in 

 1845, by M. Rand, Royal Insjiector of the For- 

 ests of Hanover, and Prof. Berthold, of the 

 University of Gottingen, gave an intere.sting 

 account of an army of these larvae which he 

 observed in 1853, and which he described as 

 the " Thomastrauer gnat" {Sdara thnme), 

 having succeeded in breeding the flies. 



"On the 10th of August, 186.5, my friend 

 Mr. .Jacob Stauffer and myself witnessed one 

 of these slimy, snakelike armies of dipterous 

 larva' in tlie yard of Col. D. AV. Pattei-son, of 

 I>ancaster. They were also observed by Mr. 

 Wm. Kite, a teacher at Westtown school, 

 Chester county, Pa.,on thellth of September, 

 1866, and also' in 1807: and Prof. W. S. Roe- 

 del, of Wytheville, Va., observed a similar 

 army at North Lebanon, Pa., on the 15th of 

 July, 1865, and they have also been witnessed 

 by other observers at luior and subseqent dates. 

 From all that is known of them, these migra- 

 tions are supposed to be for the purpose of 

 finding a more suitable locality in which to 

 undergo their transformation to the jmpa and 

 mature states : astliey migrate only after they 

 have jierfected their larval condition, at which 

 time they are about half an inch in length, 

 and .seven-sixteenths of an inch in diameter. 

 They are comjiosed of twelve segments, a small 

 black head, entirely without feet, of a trans- 

 lucent white in color, and covered with a dark 

 or greenish mucus, moving slowly along, by 

 longitudinous expansions and contractions of 

 the liodv, like maggots in general. The ropyor 

 snake-like i)rocession whicli they form is com- 

 posed of thousands of these little /arrte com- 

 pacted together and covered with slime, some- 

 times cylindrical and thicker than a man's 

 thumb, and at other times flattened to two 

 inches or more in breadth. The 'army' no- 

 ticed by Mr. Stauffer and myself, was perhaps 

 three feet in length, but part of it had been 

 destroyed by a douche of hot water before we 

 reached the iiremises: but M. Guerin-Meneville; 

 a French entomologist, observed a column that 



