THE WIRE-WORM. 129 



less noticed beetles lying on their backs making painful 

 but useless efforts to recover their position ; these do 

 not trouble the genus elater. The wire-worm is often 

 found in such marvellous abundance eating down the crops 

 as fast as they come up, that the only remedy thoroughly 

 effective is starving them out by keeping the land free from 

 vegetation, ploughing and stirring it frequently, and keep- 

 ing it as clean as possible. The birds which prey upon 

 insects are the best friends of the farmer in many cases, 

 not the less are they so in this endeavour to get rid of the 

 wire-worm, vast numbers of which are devoured by them. 

 The wire- worms are also preyed upon by an ichneumonous 

 parasite and by several insects ; the small black shining 

 beetle, the steropus madidus, also devours them largely. 

 In breaking up grass land a good preventive of the ravages 

 of the wire-worm, according to that eminent agricultural 

 entomologist Curtis, is to shallow breast-plough it to a 

 depth of two inches, or by paring and burning the surface 

 before the ploughing is done. All sorts of remedies have 

 been suggested for the destruction of the wire-worm, as 

 steeping the seed in wine and then drying it with sulphur, 

 liquid ammonia, and also by the growth of white mustard, 

 a plant which seems to be particularly obnoxious to the 

 larvse, but of which it has been said, in view of the fact, 

 that there is perhaps no more noxious weed than this plant, 

 when land is neglected, that the remedy may be worse than 

 the disease. Salt, to the extent of 10 bushels per acre, 

 and lime, 100 bushels to the acre, have both been tried, 

 but in some cases with marked results of anything but a 

 gratifying character. In America a plan which has been 

 very successful, is taking a crop of buckwheat after the 

 grass has been broken up late ploughing and frequent, as 

 often as possible in the autumn, then sowing pease in the 

 spring, then frequent ploughing next autumn this plan 

 followed, no crop succeeding has been attacked. 



Curtis, in his well-known paper in the Journal of 

 the Royal Agricultural Society, has completely exhausted 

 11 that can be said on the habits, characteristics, and 



