WIREWORMS ATTACKING CEREAL AND FORAGE CROPS. 33 
Webster carried on experiments at Cedarville, Ohio, in 1894 
to determine the ‘effectiveness of kainit as an insecticide. The fer- 
tilizer was applied at the rate of 500 pounds to the acre without 
any effect whatever. He also carried on a series of experiments at 
La Fayette, Ind., in 1889, to test the efficiency of an often-recom- 
mended substance—table salt. Pots were used in these experiments, 
and table salt applied to the surface and washed in with water. 
Three dosages were used at the rate of about 500 pounds, 1,000 
pounds, and 25,000 pounds per acre, respectively, and in no case were 
wireworms killed by the application. 
The Maine experiment station has tried a patented preparation 
composed largely of slaked lime, a “soil fungicide,” and tobacco 
dust, applied to the hills in cornfields infested with wireworms, and 
has found all of these treatments quite useless. Experiments! with 
chlorid of lime, gas lime, chlorate of potash, bisulphid of carbon, 
crude petroleum, kerosene, and emulsions of crude petroleum and 
kerosene, applied to the soil, have demonstrated that none of these 
substances is of practical value in destroying wireworms. However, 
the use of petroleum products as soil sterilizers is suggestive, and will 
be further investigated. 
Mr. J. J. Davis? has found that a soil fumigant highly recom- 
mended by some English entomologists is quite useless in combating 
Limonius confusus. 
CULTURAL METHODS. 
The third group of remedial measures—cultural methods—is the 
only one which so far has been actually proved to be of practical 
value. 
Flooding land where irrigation is practiced would be of little 
avail unless long continued, as we have records of severe outbreaks 
of wireworms on land in Indiana that is annually overflowed by 
the rivers. Fall plowing is of but little use in combating these 
insects. The cornfields so severely attacked by the wheat wire- 
worm at Bridgeport last year had been plowed in the spring. The 
garden patch, however, was fall plowed, and potatoes on this patch 
were absolutely destroyed by wireworms. Another piece of fall- 
plowed land on another part of the farm planted to corn was 
practically free from worms, which illustrates how easily faulty 
conclusions can be arrived at, with insufficient data. Mr. O. A. 
Johannsen and Miss Edith Patch record observations made at Mon- 
mouth, Me., in 1911, wherein a field was plowed after the ground 
1 Comstock, J. H., and Slingerland, M. V. Wireworms. N. Y. Cornell Univ. Agr. Exp. 
Sta., Bul. 33, November, 1891. 
2 Davis, J. J. Insect notes from Illinois for 1909. Jn Jour. Econ. Ent., v. 3, No. 2, 
p. 182, April, 1910. 
