SNAKE MILLEPEDES, MIGRATION OF. 81 



acale of field cultivation. Where a strong solution of nitrate of soda, 

 or of salt, can be run down to tliem so as to touch them, it will kill 

 them very rapidly ; but this is hardly possible in field culture, and 

 merely strewing the nitrate or salt will not answer. 



In Mr. Glenny's notes of the damage to germinating Beans caused 

 by these Millepedes, he suggested poisoning the seed, and perhaps 

 something of the nature of " pickling " might be managed in the case 

 of Mangolds, as it is just at the time of germination that the mischief 

 is specially done. 



Cotton-cake is a great attraction to some kinds of Millepedes, and 

 may be very serviceably used to draw them away from a crop ; but 

 whether it may not also to some extent be a means of drawing them 

 to where manure is used in which Cotton-cake was one of the 

 ingredients of the cattle-food is open to doubt. 



In a detailed note sent me in 1885 from Audley's Wood, Basing- 

 stoke, of one of the worst attacks on germinating Mangold plants that 

 was ever reported to me. Mangold had been grown on the ground 

 very successfully for four yea,rs, and in the previous year the land had 

 been treated at the rate of ten tons to the acre with manure from pigs 

 fatted on Barley-meal, cows fed on decorticated Cotton-cake, Maize, 

 and Bean-meal or dari crushed with Mangolds ; and also manure from 

 cart stables. The land was ploughed after the Mangold crop was 

 lifted ; deeply ploughed and left in fallow all winter. The seed was 

 drilled with ground Eape-cake, and a Mangold manure,* in which bits 

 "of bone or refuse used in the manufacture of the manure" were 

 present. 



In this quite exceptionally bad attack, besides the numbers of 

 Millepedes found at the germinating seed, they were also sometimes 

 found in bunches round bits of bone and refuse in the manure. 



But again, we do not know how the infestation came to be in such 

 vast numbers on the field where it had not previously been observed, 

 and it seems to me we need special investigation as to possibilities of 

 migration. 



In a note sent me in the course of observations by Mr. J. A. Smith, 

 of Rise Hall, Akenham, he mentioned having one morning seen such 

 numbers of Millepedes crossing a turnpike road, apparently travelling 

 from a field of Oats towards a piece of pasture-land, that the road was 

 covered with them. The specimens sent agreed with the common 

 pitchy-coloured Jidiis terrestris, the Earth Millepede. 



If we could have some detailed observations regarding habits of 

 these destructive pests, they would certainly be very useful, and I 



* Name of this manure given with the observation in my Eeport for 1885, but 

 unnecessary to repeat. 



