RELATION TO THE FARMER 265 



time begins to offer an attraction in the shape of form- 

 ing buds, and a little later the "boll- worm" makes its 

 appearance. When corn is plenty, that forms an at- 

 traction superior to everything else and then come the 

 "corn- worms" so common and objectionable in the 

 "roasting ears." Sometimes there is only one, usually 

 of good size; sometimes there are several, usually 

 smaller, and the explanation is that the insects are very 

 pugnacious and when they meet they fight. When 

 there are two or more full grown larvae in one ear, it 

 simply means that they have never chanced to meet. 

 The caterpillars continue in the corn until it is cut and 

 stacked, and some may yet be found at husking time; 

 but from the time the kernels begin to harden they go 

 underground as they mature and change to that pupal 

 stage in which they safely pass the winter. After they 

 once get started in spring they can be found almost 

 continuously in some one or the other of their food 

 plants. 



There remains yet one more way in which growing 

 crops are attacked and that is by borers, and these 

 also are of many kinds and all sizes. The stalk of wheat 

 and the fruit tree fifty years old are equally subject to 

 this kind of injury, and larvae of Coleoptera, Lepidoptera t 

 Hymenoptera and Diptera all contribute to the mischief. 



Some of these stem feeders really do not deserve 

 the name of borers at all, as for instance the larva of the 

 Hessian fly , which attacks wheat stalks at the base and 

 produces a gall that checks growth, or the joint- worm 

 which works into the stem at a joint; but for conven- 

 ience we may class as borers all forms which feed out 

 of sight in stems, twigs, branches or trunks. And it is 

 astonishing what a variety of borers there are and how 

 generally plants are infested. Not cultivated plants 

 only, but arrant weeds like burdock, thistle, rag- weed 



