34 Bulletin of the New York State Museum. 



Is the digging-out method practicable on a large scale, and will 

 it give the results desired ? An " Old Farmer " writes as follows of 

 it, after premising that he had made a faithful trial of many reme- 

 dies, but was now employing this in his corn-field, and that it was 

 adopted, so far as he knew, by all good farmers. 



" I have six acres of corn planted on sod which was turned over 

 from a pasture just before planting. By the time it was up, the 

 cut-worms made their appearance by hundreds, and my hired man 

 was alarmed. 'All right,' said I, 'I am ready for them.' I set my 

 two men at work on them, making regular days work of the busi- 

 ness. Taking a row at a time, and digging down wherever a corn- 

 plant was cut off, they went over the field in about half a day, kill- 

 ing over fifteen hundred. A few days later, they went over again, 

 and did not get quite so many. I had the corn planted rather thick, 

 and the plants which the worms took could be spared. At the third 

 hunt, when the corn was about as large as the worms could manage 

 I directed the crop to be regularly and evenly thinned, at the same 

 operation. I have saved my corn, and have a handsome and even 

 field. Had I let the worms have their way, I should certainly have 

 lost half. I once lost over three-fourths. I have spent three days 

 work in this way, worth $4 — and I have saved by the operation at 

 least one hundred bushels of corn on the six acres ; more probably 

 one hundred and fifty. I think it pays!" {Country Gentleman for 

 June 14, 1877, p. 376.) 



The letter states that the cut-worms destroyed, were " the plump 

 brown grub that cuts the corn off just below the surface." 



Another species of cut-worm differs in its habit of feeding from 

 the above, in that it cuts the corn off just above the surface of the 

 ground. It is this species which is referred to by Mr. Armstrong, 

 secretary of the Elmira Farmers' Club, in his commendation of the 

 digging-out remedy. He writes : 



" There is really but one way to save the crop after the plants are 

 once attacked by cut-worms — that is, to dig the worms out and 

 kill them. It is not a difficult task, nor is it very costly. I presume 

 that a fourth part of the loss sustained, would be a full equivalent 

 of all the labor it wo aid cost. The worm does the mischief at 

 night, and before morning burrows in the ground near the spot 

 where its depredations have been committed. A practiced eye will 

 readily discern the entrance to the hiding-place into which the 



