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Plowing. — There seems little ground for hoping that the number of 

 Leaf- hoppers can be diminished materially by auy system of plowing 

 under, or by rotation of crops. Grass is an essential on every farm, 

 and no system of starvation could be adopted, and even if deprived of 

 the common pasture grasses, the most of the species evidently thrive 

 on the fox-tails and other grasses that nourish as weeds. The leaf- 

 hoppers are too active to be plowed under and can readily migrate to 

 other fields. Eggs for most of the species, at least, are not deposited 

 at any fixed time of the year, and while by plowing under in May, June, 

 or August many eggs might be buried, plenty of hoppers would 

 escape to the surrounding grass land to keep the farm well stocked. 



Mowing. — When the grass in which Leaf-hoppers have been very 

 abundant is cut short, leaving only a dry stubble, the insects seem to 

 be forced to migrate, as few or none can be found in such places a few 

 days after the cutting nor until a new growth gives them a source of 

 fresh food supply. While early cutting of meadows badly infested 

 might result in saving a larger crop, it must follow that the Leaf-hoppers 

 would travel to pastures or other grass land, and it would be simply a 

 question as to where they would do the greater amount of damage. It 

 would seem feasible, however, to take advantage of the time when the 

 crop has been just removed to use hopper dozers or other means for 

 capturing them before they have left for fresh pasture. We know, as 

 yet, too little as to where and when the bulk of the eggs are deposited 

 to say whether cutting at any particular time would result in the de- 

 struction of any number of eggs. While we know that Leaf-hoppers de- 

 posit eggs in stems and leaves of plants, we are not acquainted with 

 their full history or the methods of different species, so that it would 

 be unsafe at present to base remedies on this part of their history. 



Capturing in Nets.— The ease with which all species of leaf-hoppers 

 affecting grass can be taken in sweep-nets led me to try the use of this 

 principle on a larger scale. I therefore had a couple of wire frames 

 made 3 feet long, fastened a deep cheese-cloth net to each and attached 

 these to two long handles, so that the frame of one would brush the 

 ground about a foot behind the forward one. The object of having two 

 nets was to secure the hoppers which allowed the first wire to pass over* 

 them before leaping. With the handles the net was pushed forward so 

 that the insects were not disturbed till the approach of the net and a 

 strip of ground a yard wide was gone over either at a walk or a run. 

 While numerous insects were secured by this plan, Grasshoppers, Moths, 

 Clover-seed Midges, and large numbers of Leaf-hoppers, the count of 

 those secured from the nets showed that as compared with what must 

 actually exist on the same ground as shown by other captures, only a 

 portion of the Leaf-hoppers were thus secured, and considering the 

 trouble of holding and destroying all the insects captured, I concluded 

 that this plan was not equal to the hopper-dozer for this purpose. The 

 second net captured a goodly number of insects as well as the forward 



