79 



very soon after the crop is sown, turning the infested plants under and 

 thoroughly covering them. Simple cultivation, whereby the plants 

 are only killed, would probably only destroy a portion of the insects, 

 the full-grown larvse very likely going through the remainder of their 

 transformations. 



The application of fertilizers is, I believe, here in this State confined 

 to the poorer soils, and there more for its general effect on the crops 

 than as against the effects of insects. The idea in late sowing is to 

 retard the plants so that they do not appear until after the greater part 

 of the fall brood of flies have appeared and died, then to overcome 

 the effect of this delay by aiding the plants to make the greatest possi- 

 ble growth before winter closes in, which will the better enable them to 

 withstand its rigors. In this direction, it would seem that the applica- 

 tion of proper commercial fertilizers would pay by the effect upon the 

 growing plants, even though the land itself was not in actual want of 

 such treatment. The application to a field which has previously been 

 seriously damaged, with a view of encouraging the throwing out of 

 fresh tillers, is for practically the same purpose 5 and if there is a tend- 

 ency to throw out the later shoots freely, if not too late in the season, 

 many may be enabled to secure sufficient vigor to sustain them until 

 spring. Whether it would be more profitable to plow and resow than 

 to try to secure a crop from the infested field by the aid of fertilizers 

 is, of course, a question which each farmer must decide for himself in 

 accordance with the time of year and extent of injury already done. 



These measures are all of them practical and entail little if any 

 unusual expense. In fact, good farming presupposes that the most of 

 them will be carried out as among the essential elements of the business. 

 Where clover is to follow wheat it of course precludes the burning of 

 stubble or the destruction of volunteer plants, but it necessitates the 

 rotation of crop, and decoys can be sown and the seeding delayed. It 

 is hardly possible for a farmer to become so situated that he can not 

 carry out some of these measures, and if this were done generally, and 

 every year, the Hessian fly would, in all probability, become of so little 

 importance that it would cease to enter seriously into the problem of 

 successful wheat growing. 



