PROCEEDINGS OF THE FARMERS' CLUB. 179 



Next spring I tried again, and set all on dry land, and all lived. I have 

 had the same success with elms, moving them from wet to dry land. 



The Curculio — Why they did not Ravage the Fruit this Year. 



• 



A fruit grower in Massachusetts gives it as his opinion that a cold May 

 will stop the ravages of the curculio. It did in 1860 and 1862, aided by 

 • frost in the fore part of June. Next year, if the spring is favorable for the 

 production of these pests, he thinks we shall have them as thick as ever. 

 The only way to get rid of them is to have all the fruit trees that are 

 most affected by curculio planted in a lot where hogs can be kept. But it 

 will not avail much for one man to pursue this course unless all his neigh- 

 bors will do the same. In some cases the pests have been kept from trees 

 by smoke of burning rags, leather, feathers, or strong smelling herbs, or 

 with tar and sulphur fumes. Dried cow dung is also useful, iihe currant 

 insect is also prevented by making a smudge under the bushes at the pro- 

 per time in the spring. 



Insect Eaters. 



Mr. Soloii Robinson. — We need more information about insect destroyers, 

 , We have made war upon birds, for some fancied injury they do to crops, 

 ' without considering that they are natural enemies of insects — we hate the 

 sight of toads, and kick them out of our path, without stopping to consider 

 how many insects hurtful to the garden these toads have destroyed — we 

 have a deadly enimity against skunks, and teach the boys and dogs to 

 catch and kill, without stopping to consider that every skunk upon a man's 

 farm is v/orth, annually, the interest of a hundred dollars. It is true, a 

 skunk will eat an egg or a chicken. A mink or a weasel will do the same. 

 What else will they do ? Let us think. They certainly do not live upon 

 eggs and chickens. No farm affords enough chickens and eggs to furnish 

 food for a colony of skunks, but it does furnish bugs, worms, rats, mice and 

 moles, which the skunks industriously pursue. The weasel is a most effi- 

 cient ratter. I am not sure about him as an insect destroyer as I am of 

 the mink. Insects are his natural food. I have heard of one man in Cen- 

 tral New York who has a pen of domestic minks, which he undertook to 

 breed for their fur, which he finds a profitable undertaking, but he has found 

 another thing connected with this new kind of farm stock still more profit- 

 able. By keeping his minks and bees close together, he has found that 

 they catch and eat every miller that comes near them. If a grasshopper sails 

 into the pen he is snapped up before he touches the ground. Boys are much 

 amused in feeding grasshoppers to the minks, which are as easily penned 

 as rabbits, and much more useful, as they breed more rapidly and the pelts 

 are valuable. Let us study natural history a little more. Let us learn, as 

 we can, that in destroying some animals considered noxious, we have 

 increased others that are really so. Let us learn that skunks, weasels, 

 minks, toads, crows, robins, sparrows, swallows, martins, et genus omne, 

 are not the farmer's worst enemies — they are all insect eaters and vermin 

 destroyers. 



