PROCEEDINGS OF THE FARMERS' CLUB. 67 



Sorghum. Cr. 



2,000 gallons syrup, 40 cents $800 00 



200 bushels seed for feed 30 00 



$830 00 



Sorghum. Dr. 



Use of land $20 00 



Plowing the same 10 00 



Seed 4 00 



Marking and planting 10 00 



Tending 20 00 



Harvesting 60 00 



Ten cords of wood 25 00 



Manufacturing 76 00 



Marketing 20 00 



Sixty barrels at $1.25 each 75 00 



Interest on mill, etc 15 00 



VV'ear and tear of machines 25 00 



$350 00 



Profits on sorghum $480 00 



Broom Corn. 



Prof. Nash. — In the region of Northampton, Mass., broom corn has been 

 grown for over half a century. I remember the time when $30 an acre 

 rent was first offered for land near Amherst to raise broom corn, and it was 

 thought a very extravagant price. I have since seen land rent for $100 

 an acre to grow tobacco. This, however, included a small supply of 

 manure. I remember, too, that broom corn was a very profitable crop 

 about Northampton, fifty years before the farmers not fifty miles off found 

 it out, so little is known of the cultivation of one town in one adjoining. 

 Farmers are excessively cautious about adopting any new crop, or new 

 mode of farming. 



Locusts — How they Affect Fruit. 



The Chairman stated that a person who has the records of a cider mill in 

 New Jersey for ninety years, assures him that the seventeen-year locusts 

 have more efl'ect upon fruit trees than is generally ascribed to them. He 

 says that it is fully proved that apples are more abundant for seven or 

 eight or nine years after the locusts appear, than they are in the seven 

 or eight years previous to their appearance. 



Dr. Trimble. — This is an interesting fact, and is easily accounted for. 

 The locusts in their perfect state, like butterflies of destructive caterpillars, 

 eat nothing. They come out of the ground to deposit their eggs, which 

 they do in the bark of fruit trees in preference to any other. These eggs 

 hatch perfectly-formed locusts, of extremely diminutive size, drop to the 

 earth immediately, and burrow in its crevices, and attach themselves to the 

 roots of trees, and undergo their slow growth in the earth, and of course 

 suck the juices of the tree from the roots and injure its vigor, so that 

 towards the end of the seventeen years it does not produce as much fruit 

 as when the insects are very minute. When they come out of the earth 

 they are full-grown and fat, and eat nothing above ground, and only injure 

 trees by perforating the limbs to deposit eggs. By this the limbs of some 

 slow-growing oaks are killed. 



