PEA WEEVILS. 115 



put a sufficient number of men on a good acreage to get the plants 

 dressed whilst the dew remained on. 



Rolling does not injure the beetles, and unless there is a good 

 thickness of soil rolled hard down above tliem (as mentioned in the 

 note of Mr. Cabberley at p. 113) they will in all probability soon make 

 their way up again. 



The only available methods of checking the attack seem to be fore- 

 stalling it. The weevils are in some years to be found in enormous 

 niiwhcrs where they can be swept together and destroyed during 

 harvesting operations, as on the "reapers," and in the Pea waggons. 

 Sweeping these up and destroying them would get rid of a definite 

 quantity of future mischief. If left, some live througli the winter in 

 various shelters, but notably in stubble. We have observations of the 

 total loss of Trifolium incarnatum from this cause where the Trifolium 

 was drilled in stubble. On examination the beetles were found 

 sheltered in the top joint of the stubble, and on this observation being 

 followed up, and the stubble skimmed, so as to get rid of it as a beetle 

 shelter, it was believed the trouble was lessened. 



The beetles have also been found in January, where they had 

 apparently come out from, their shelters in Barley stubble. These and 

 similarly sheltered hybernating beetles start the attack ; but a portion 

 of those which might be really got rid of in harvest time do mischief 

 in another way : they lay their eggs at the roots of Clover, or other 

 crops suitable, and, firstly, from the maggots from these eggs working 

 at the clover-roots, and, next, by the beetles to which these maggots 

 turn, furnishing the summer brood, attack is set up, of which the origin 

 might with little difficulty have been destroyed in the previous year, 



In most insect attacks, keeping up the strength of the plant is a 

 great preventive of loss, if not of insect injury ; but in this case the 

 little Pea plants are so small, and with so few resources in themselves, 

 that this principle is not always to be relied on. With root crops, as 

 Turnips or Mangolds, there is a store of food to draw on, which often 

 restores a crop even when eaten back to an almost hopeless state. But 

 with the Pea crop there are only the stringy fibrous roots to draw on, 

 and so far as experiments show, if the crop becomes leafless, it cannot 

 be trusted to, to recover. 



So long as there is some amount of leaf (as in the experiment 

 noted at p. 114, where nitrate of soda and soot were used), strong 

 stimulant may push on leafage faster than the beetles gnaw it off, but 

 otherwise the dressings seem of very little use. But so far as can be 

 managed, it appears to be the hearty growth of the Pea which is the 

 mainstay in attack, joined in some cases to date of growth being when 

 the first outburst of beetle has taken place, and before the second set 

 come towards June. 



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