COOPERATION 



le common skunk, weasels, and foxes. The natural food of the 

 skunk is not chickens or eggs, but insects, mice, and young rabbits. 

 A weasel, having acquired the habit, may at times kill poultry; 

 yet normally they eat meadow mice, rabbits, and squirrels. 

 Foxes occasional depredators cannot injure chickens which are 

 properly housed at night. In the open, they feed upon rabbits, 

 chipmunks, field mice, crickets, grasshoppers, white grubs, and 

 May beetles. The ruffed grouse and the quail, also, suffer through 

 their attacks. 



Hogs in an orchard pick up wormy windfalls; and hogs or 

 sheep, or both, turned into an insect-infested field after crops are 

 removed, are helps to the orchardist and agriculturist. Neglect 

 of active measures at the beginning of an attack frequently means 

 loss; plant lice, for example, increase with marvellous rapidity, 

 and individuals should be destroyed by thorough treatment at the 

 very beginning of their work. 



Certain questions, however, should present themselves to the 

 thoughtful farmer or orchardist before attacking an insect which is 

 apparently causing him a loss. He should first of all ask himself 

 whether the insect in question is really the cause of the injury 

 observed; secondly, is its attack lasting, thus making it necessary 

 to take action, or is it temporary and not of great importance? 

 thirdly, is the insect subject to attacks from birds or predaceous 

 or parasitic insects (not always readily determined) which will 

 make it unnecessary for one to wage war upon it? and, finally, if 

 its extermination is practical, which is the best and most economi- 

 cal way to attack it? is it a sucking insect or one which eats the 

 surface of the plant? If it is a sucking insect, employment of in- 

 ternal poisons, like arsenic, Paris green or arsenate of lead, would 

 be absolutely useless. 



Stop Rodents in Time. One pocket gopher, in a nursery or 

 young orchard, may, by working on roots, put many trees out of 

 commission. This can be prevented by early attention. Mice 

 and rabbits, in situations subject to their presence, will in winter 

 work havoc on unprotected young apple trees. 



Cooperation. Finally, there should exist in a farm community 

 a spirit of cooperation in up-to-date farming methods and in 

 general protection which spells success in agriculture. One 

 farmer's effort against grasshoppers or Hessian flies is of little avail 

 if his neighbors are not equally active. A striving to attain a 

 certain high standard of excellence on the part of all members of 



