190 {Assembly 



hand, make a thorough onset- leave not a web to shelter a stray 

 one. Some have long poles, which they insert into the web, 

 twist it round and round, until the whole are wound on the pole 

 — tread them on the earth, &c. Some use a bunch of cloth or 

 tow, dipped in spirits of turpentine, and burn them. I tried a 

 gun, with small charges of powder only, directed at the web at 

 such a distance from it that tlie explosion may diverge enough to 

 embrace the whole nest. I have tried it often; it destroyed the 

 nest so that I could never find any vestiges of it or the inhabitants, 

 and yet did not hurt the trees in the slightest degree. Whatever 

 may be the plan of attacJi upon these terrible little creatures, 

 who, out of our three or four thousand millions of dollars worth 

 of crops in one year in our great country — (the little enemy) — 

 does harm to the extent (very generally) of at least one hundred 

 millions of dollars — a thirtieth part, or nearly the share of a mil- 

 lion of our people — more damage than all the navies and armies 

 of Europe could do us in the same campaign — that is between 

 April and November. In wheat, in grapes, in potatoes, the da- 

 mage to France alone has been more than enough to pay for Na- 

 poleon's great onslaught upon Moscow ! 



When the insect is subdued and the weeds all hoed out, then 

 comes the suitable after tillage of the vine and fruit trees. Some- 

 times, in an unusual drought, they may want watering. If so, 

 do it in the night. One of the most successful gardeners I have 

 known was Richard Amos, of Greenwich, who in times of hard 

 drought always went to bed soon after breakfast, rose at tea time, 

 and worked all night in the garden with his watering pot. On 

 one occasion he could not get fresh water enough, and resorted to 

 the Hudson river, being on one si4e of his farm, and used salt 

 water, especially with a very fine hybrid Savoy cabbage field 

 — pouring the salt water around them and near, but not touch- 

 ing the cabbages, for he supposed it would injure their 

 growth, being quite salt at that time of drought. This course of 

 summer treatment of cabbnges gave him a great crop when most 

 gardeners and farmers had scarcely any at all. He made three 

 times more money than in ordinary years. Mr. Amos acquired 

 a large fortune for a gardener, probably more than $100,000. 



