136 CULTURE OF FARM CROPS. 



'perfect cure' for the grub; but of this, as of all applica- 

 tions having a similar aim namely, killing the grub it 

 may be accepted as a truth that before you can apply as 

 much of it as will be necessary to kill the grub, you will run 

 a good chance of doing something more than that killing 

 the corn, a consummation by no means devoutly to be 

 wished. In this, indeed, as in other things, 'prevention 

 is better than cure.' And the naming of this time- 

 honoured proverb honoured, we fear, in too many cases, 

 more in the breach of it than in the observance brings to 

 our recollection two capital papers on the prevention of the 

 ravages of the grub, which proceeds upon the principle that 

 prevention is better than cure, and that this prevention is 

 secured by no mode so effectually as by arranging the rota- 

 tion of the crops of a farm, and the modes of working the 

 soil for these, in such a way that they will have a direct re- 

 ference to the habit of the grab. The papers alluded to are 

 first, one from an American Journal, and secondly, one 

 recently read by Mr. Johnston at the Fettercairn Farmers' 

 Club, and of it we below present a very brief resume, giving 

 first that from the American Journal, which opens thus 

 suggestively : " Nothing can be applied to the land suffi- 

 ciently powerful to destroy them. You cannot poison them, 

 but you can make the land unfit for a wire-worm to live- 

 in it. 



" If you observe attentively a field in which the wire- 

 worm is beginning his depredations, you will see that the 

 latter commence where the ground is loosest, and that they 

 spread from there slowly to all sides. If, perchance, two 

 furrows have been thrown together in ploughing, so form- 

 ing a sort of ridge, the worm invariably commences to eat 

 along this ridge, where the ground is drier and more loose 

 than on the rest of the field. We see this very plainly 

 here, where all fields are thrown together into lands or 

 ridges, which are from 1 to 3 rods wide, and whose ridge 

 sometimes is 2 to 4 feet higher than the furrow. This is 

 by no means a commendable practice, and is more and 

 more disappearing, but it still exists, and where it does so, 



