. 



238 Success with Small Fruits. 



One of the best preventives is to keep the soil under cultivation, 

 for this beetle rarely lays its eggs in loose soil, preferring old meadows and 

 moist, loamy, sodded land : the larvae are equally fond of grass roots. 

 This is one of the reasons why a year or two of cultivation must often 

 precede the planting of strawberries. When this fruit is grown in matted 

 beds, they afford as attractive a place for the deposit of eggs as grass land, 

 and this is another fact in favor of the narrow row system and thorough 

 cultivation. 



Mr. Caywood, a nurseryman, says that he has prevented the approach 

 of the grub by mixing a tea-spoonful of sulphur in the soil just beneath a 

 plant, when setting it out. Mr. Peter B. Mead recommends the pomace 

 of the castor bean spread on the surface around the plants. I have never 

 tried these preventives. One thing certainly might be done extermi- 

 nating war might be waged on the beetles. In the morning, they are 

 sluggish, and easily caught; and in the evening, we can treat them as 

 whisky venders do the loafers burn them up. "Every female beetle 

 killed heads off 200 grubs." If one could discover a complete remedy for 

 this pest, he would deserve a statue in bronze. Mr. Fuller had a domesti- 

 cated crow that would eat a hundred of these grubs daily. " When domesti- 

 cated," he adds, " the crow forgets the tricks of his wild nature, and, not 

 being a timid bird, he is not frightened by hoe or spade, but when the 

 earth is turned over, is generally there to see and do his duty." 



A fruit grower writes to Professor C. V. Riley : " I inclose specimens of 

 a terrible pest on my strawberry vines. The leaves are almost entirely des- 

 troyed. I must fight them some way, or else give up the fruit entirely," 

 etc. In a letter to the New York Tribune, Professor Riley replied : 



" The insect referred to is the Strawberry Worm (Emphytus Maculatus), the 

 larvae of a saw-fly, which is of quite frequent occurrence in the West. I quote the 

 following account of it from my Ninth Report : 



" Early in the Spring, numerous flies may be seen hanging to and flying about 

 the vines, in fields which have been previously affected. They are dull and 

 inactive in the cool of the morning and evening, and at these nours are seldom 

 noticed. They are of a pitchy black color, with two rows of large, transverse, dull 

 whitish spots upon the abdomen. The female, with the saw-like instrument peculiar 

 to the insects of this family, deposits her eggs, by a most curious and interesting 

 process, in the stems of the plants, clinging the while to the hairy substance by 

 which these stems are covered. 



" The eggs are white, opaque, and 0.03 of an inch long, and may be readily 

 perceived upon splitting the stalk, though the outside orifice at which they were intro- 

 duced is scarcely visible. They soon increase somewhat in bulk, causing a swelling 

 of the stalk, and hatch in two weeks, more or less, according to the temperature, 



