Remedies. 237 



insidious enemy has been at work for days, and that not a root is left 

 An inch or two beneath the dying plant, the grub lies gorged and quiet 

 in the early morning ; but, if undisturbed, it soon seeks the next best 

 plant it can find, and it is so voracious that it is hard to compute the 

 number it can destroy throughout the long season in which it works. 



Having made its full growth in the spring of the third year, this grub 

 passes into the chrysalis state, and in May or June comes out a perfect 

 insect, or beetle. It is " one, two, three, and out." 



While there are beetles every year, there is, in every locality, a special 

 crop every third year ; in other words, if we observe beetles in great 

 numbers during the coming May and June, we may expect them again in 

 like quantities three years after, and every second year from such super- 

 abundance they will be very destructive in all those fields throughout the 

 locality wherein the eggs were laid. 



REMEDIES. 



When once our soil is full of them, scarcely any remedy is 

 possible that year. Surface applications that would kill the grubs would 

 also kill the plants. Where they are few and scattering, they can be dug 

 out and killed. Sometimes, boys are paid so much a pint. When seeing 

 a wilting plant, it would scarcely be human nature not to dig out the pest, 

 and grind it under our heel. Prevention of the evil is usually our best 

 hope. Mr. Downing writes to me : " I believe that if you would use 

 refuse salt three or four years in succession, at the rate of five or six 

 bushels to the acre, the grubs would not trouble you much. Salt will not 

 kill the full-grown larvae, but those in a very young state." The reader 

 will remember a statement in Mr. Hale's letter on commercial fertilizers 

 confirmatory of this view. 



Experiments in this direction should be carefully made, since, in one 

 instance that I am aware of, a fruit grower remarked, " I do not know 

 whether the salt killed the grubs, but I know it killed my plants." It is 

 my purpose, however, to try this agent very thoroughly. There is 

 danger of our being misled in our estimate of the value of remedies, 

 from forgetfulness of the habits of the insect. We find our ground full of 

 larvae one year, and apply some cure or preventive. The following 

 spring, the larvae become beetles and fly away, and, even if they fill the 

 same ground with eggs again, the grubs are too small to be noticed that 

 year ; and therefore we may claim that our remedy is effectual, when there 

 may have been no effect from it whatever. 



