The Lancaster Farmer, 



Dr. S. S. EATHVON, Editor. 



LANCASTER, PA., JULY, 1881. 



Vol. xni. iTo. 7. 



TOBACCO CULTURE. 



The sorics of cxccllfiit articles on the de- 

 tails ol tobacco ciillure, and which wi- have 

 repuhhshed from the columns of the Daily 

 Neto Km, of Lanca.ster city, were wiitteii by 

 Mr. !•". R. Diffenderffer, a promiuenl member 

 of the editorial staff of that paper; and hav- 

 ing copied them on account of their rare merit, 

 we feel in duty bound to make an acknowl- 

 edgment, that of right should have been 

 made earlier. Our main object in io)iying 

 them into The F.\kmek is because of iheir 

 local origin and value, and because we wished 

 to see a more permanent and accessilile re- 

 cord of them than they find in the voluminous 

 mass of a daily or weekly folio, that is very 

 seldom bound and scarcely ever accoiupanied 

 with an iwlex. These articles are not merely 

 ephemeral in their character, but may hv read 

 a year or ten years hence by the novi('e. with 

 as much profit as they can now. If time 

 should develop errors they can be easily elimi- 

 nated, and any new facts can be added as a 

 sequel at any time. When we deem a thing 

 xoorthy we care very little whether it emaiiates 

 from a mountain or a mole-hill— an enemy or 

 a friend— and we endeavor to view it through 

 the medium of that freedom which the truth 

 makes free. 



ASSASSINATION. 

 It is not the province of this journal to 

 notice passing events, either ordinary or ex- 

 traordinary, that are beyond the scope of its 

 Chosen specialty, but on this occasion it can- 

 not refrain from recording its deep and unut- 

 terable condemnation of the attempt to assas- 

 sinate the President of the United States, on 

 Saturday morning, the 2d of July, at Washing- 

 ton city. So far as it concerns the motive or 

 intents of the assassin, and the moral signifi- 

 cance of the act, the deed has been done, 

 whether the President mrvivcs or perinhes, 

 and the perpetrator should be held accord- 

 ingly responsible. We do not believe that 

 the recording angel will make any distinction 

 between the acts of Charles Guiteau and 

 .John AVilkes Booth. Both acts were premed- 

 itated and diabolical and were characterized, 

 -not in essence, but only in degi-ee, by that 

 species of insanity under which all heinous 

 crimes are perpetrated. If the sanity of the 

 fiend Guiteau is of such an order as to lead 

 to his acquittal of the crime of murder in the 

 first degree— should President Garfield die- 

 then there is no safety for any official func- 

 tionary under the government— a sad and dis- 

 graceful commentary on republican institu- 

 tions, and the moral integrity of the nine- 

 teeth century. 



We sincerely believe that ail such offences 

 should be tried under the forms of law, and 

 according to the testimony, disbarring only 

 the plea of insanity. If acquitted by a com- 

 petent jury of his countrymen, then endow 

 him with the legal benefits of such acquittal, 

 But if convicted, let him be sentenced accord- 

 ing to the degree of his crime, and let the 

 disbarred plea of insanity be tried by a com 



mission of competent physicians. If after a 

 thorough investigation it transpires that he 

 really was insane, let his punishment be com- 

 muted to imprisonment in an insane asylum 

 for life, or for a term corresi)onding to the 

 ree of his offence, provided a similar com- 

 mission shall award tliat he is sane enough to 

 be set at liberty at the expiration of his term. 



If Guiteau really was insane, a deep con- 

 demnation belongs somewhere, for permitting 

 him to roam at large, placing the lives of those 

 in jeopardy from whom he might take the 

 notion to exort favors. The true u.se of liberty 

 is a beautiful idea, but its morbid manifesta- 

 tion is injurious to the individual claiming it, 

 and the community or country tolei-ating it. 

 It is like charity worthily bestowed, but there 

 are those who are so exceedingly perverse that 

 the greatest act of charity would be to knock 

 them down and put them in manacles. 



It is a gross perversion in a government of 

 the people,, by the people and for the people, 

 that its officers cannot be permitted to admin- 

 ister it in equity, without placing their lives 

 in jeopardy. May the nation and the state 

 open their eyes to the enormities that charac- 

 terize the present period- high and low. 



WIRE-WORMS. 



Although these very many years complaints 

 have been lodged against loire-worms for their 

 injurious attacks upon young wheat and young 

 corn, and, more recently, the young tobacco 

 plants, both in the seed-beds and after it is 

 transplanted in the fields, yet, from specimens 

 of so-called wire-wovms sent to me from dif- 

 ferent localities in the county of Lancaster 

 and elsewhere, it is very evident to my mind 

 that there is a misapprehension abroad as to 

 wliat a wire-worm really is. People may 

 claim that they have a right to call an animal 

 any name they please so that it expresses 

 what they mean, never once considering that 

 it is of equal importance to the elucidation of 

 a subject that the name should be such as 

 other people understand. Taking our Euro- 

 pean ancestors as a guide in vulgar nomen- 

 clature, a wire-worm is the larvie of a certain 

 species of coleopterous insects, known by the 

 English name of "Click-beetles," the German 

 name of "Schnellkceferen, " and the American 

 name of ''llammer-bugs," [Eleteridce). But 

 even confining the name to coleopterous larvie, 

 there is a likelihood of confounding these wire- 

 worms with the larvae of another coleopter- 

 ous family {Temhrionidce) usually called 

 "meal-worms," which they very nearly re- 

 semble, and which are perhaps fully as wirey 

 as the wire-worm itself. The larv:c of the 

 Tenebrions, however, are usually found in dry 

 dead wood, and in meal bins. Old mills some- 

 times fairly swarm with them, and families 

 that keep their own meal-barrels or meal-bins, 

 are often annoyed by them. 



Many of the larvic of the chck-beetles also 

 burrow in dead or living wood. These and 

 their cogeners we may term the true wire- 

 worms. The Tenebrions pseudo-wire-worms 



and the wire-like centipedes, bogus wire- 

 worms, or " gally-worms." 



The true wire-worm is iKnhaps the md&t 

 ditBcult enemy to contend against that infebts 

 vegetation. Most other insCfits that infest 

 vegetation only remain in the larva state a 

 comparatively short period, undergoing their 

 transformations within a single year or half 

 year; but wire- worms require from three to 

 live years to complete their larval develop- 

 ment, remaining the while in the soil and 

 feeding ujwn the roots of tender vegetation. 

 So that a field planted in tobacco may have 

 ha<l the young and invisible wire-worms in 

 the soil before the young tobacco plants were 

 transferred to it — their first stages of growth 

 escaping the observation of the planter. Of 

 the true wire-worms there are very many spe- 

 cies—perhaps fifteen hundred or two thous- 

 and; but they are not all of the same/c/rm by 

 any lueans. Some are cylindrical and others 

 are more or less flattened. Some are different 

 shades of white in color, some yellowish, some 

 different shades of brown, and othere pink 

 colored, becoming darker as they advance in 

 age. The head and mandjbles are usually a 

 dark brown or nearly a black. The feelers, or 

 antennae, are very short— in many of them 

 scarcely perceptible. They never have more 

 than six feet, and these are attached to the 

 first three segments or joints of the body, 

 unless a protuberence on the under side of 

 the last joiut but one may be regarded as a 

 foot. At all events, in locomotion they seem 

 to make use of it as a proleg or propleg. Their 

 bodies are generally, or in many instances, 

 firm and very smooth or polished, enabling 

 them to slip through between the fingers verj' 

 readily when taken into the hand, or to bur- 

 row with great facility when they are laid 

 upon friable or soft ground. It is difficult to 

 determine the species from the larvas alone, 

 and still more difficult to continue observa- 

 tions for three, four, five or six years in suc- 

 cession, for the purpose of identification. 

 Although it may not be unimportant to know 

 the specific name of the wire-worm that now 

 infests the tobacco fields of I..ancaster county, 

 still, that is not the chief knowledge the 

 tobacco grower desires. The remedy to de- 

 stroy it without injuring the plants is the 

 chief matter of interest ; nevertheless some 

 knowledge of the history and habits of the 

 worm may be essential to the intelligent appli- 

 cation of the remedy or remedie.s, when they 

 are known. I have now before me some forty 

 or fifty of these wire-worms that were brought 

 to me by Mr. Hippey, of Donegal township, 

 gathered from comparatively a few plants. 

 He also brought me one of the infested plants. 

 The worm appears to enter the plant from 

 about or below the surface of the ground, 

 tunneling the midribs of the large leaves, or 

 the main stem. It was only a few days after 

 the tobacco was transplanted, and the worms 

 were too large to have been developed from 

 eggs deposited at the base of the plant since 

 its transfer from tbeaeed-bed. It must have 



