Cut-Worms. 31 



Late plowing. — A gentleman from Chautauqua county, N. Y., 

 states, from the result of forty years experience, that plowing the 

 ground late in the autumn or in the winter, if there is hard freez- 

 ing afterward, will certainly destroy the cut-worms {Count Gent., 

 for Feb. 29, 1874, p. 71). 



The efficacy of such late plowing has been affirmed by many 

 writers, and has also been presented in some of our entomological 

 reports as one of the best of remedies. That it has not always been 

 'attended with success (see G.-G., for March 5, 1874, p. 147, where 

 the method is said to have failed entirely), may be accounted for by 

 its not having been done at the proper time. 



The plowing should be deferred until the cut- worms have become 

 torpid, and it should be sufficiently thorough to crush the cells that 

 they have shaped for their winter's sleep. These cells are believed 

 to be essential to their survival of the winter. Within them, curled 

 in a ring, and in such a position that the smallest possible portion 

 of their surface (a single point only upon a few, not all, of their 

 rounded segments) is in contact with the ground — they undergo 

 freezing, perhaps alternate freezing and thawing over and over 

 repeatedly, with impunity. 



Under different conditions — with the soil enveloping them, rest- 

 ing upon and adhering to their entire surface, covering their breath- 

 ing-pores and working within the joints of their abdomen — "it 

 would indeed be a marvel if the rigors of winter should not prove 

 fatal to them. The entomologist knows how important it is that 

 the cell shaped by the caterpillar for its pupation, in carefully pre- 

 pared ground, for its three or four weeks occupancy in the summer, 

 should not be destroyed if he would succeed in obtaining the moth 

 for his cabinet. 



Late plowing in the spring, just before a late planting, has also 

 been recommended for infested sod-land, upon the theory that the 

 cut- worms will have fed to maturity upon the sod, leaving the corn 

 to spring up untouched, and with a more vigorous and healthful 

 growth in the warmer soil and temperature of the advanced season. 



Tin Bands.— A simple, cheap and permanent device for protection 

 of single plants, is this : A strip of tin two inches wide, ten inches 

 long, bent into the form of a cylinder, with a narrow lap at each 

 end so as to hook together. The following is given in its favor : 



"It works to a charm ; no cut- worm ever goes over ifc ; it can be 

 hooked together and put over a plant, and remain there until the 



