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field and keep anywhere from a dozen to twenty chickens picking up 
their living among the sweet potatoes. The practice is said to be 
effective, and that is all that can be asked. Few of the farmers raise 
their own chickens ; but just when they need them they buy them in 
the Philadelphia market and keep them running in the sweet potato 
field until the insects have been cleared up; then they either fatten and 
kill them for their own use or ship them to market again. 
Truckers, of whom there are a very great number in southern New Jer- 
sey, have lost heavily on their tomato crops, chiefly from meteorological 
conditions, but largely also by tbe corn worm {Reliothis armiger). 
Early tomatoes were scarce, owing to the heavy rains at the time that 
the plants set the first blossoms. These were blighted and the plants 
recovered slowly from the setback received, and almost all of the sec- 
ond set proved to be infested by worms. One source of profit, there- 
fore, for our farmers was practically cut off entirely, because early toma- 
toes are usually counted on as a mojiey crop. 
The onion maggot appeared in Cumberland County early in the sea- 
son and showed itself in large numbers on the plantations. The same 
measures that were so successful last year were again adopted ; that 
is, the earth was turned back from the onion rows, kainit was applied 
in a heavy dressing in the furrow, the earth was turned back again, 
and in three days thereafter not a maggot could be found in tbe fields. 
This is the second season in succession when this practice has proved 
entirely successful. It has checked injury by killing the larvae, and it 
has stimulated the plants to such an extent that they overcame the 
injury that had been already done, and matured the fruit. I think I 
am justified in claiming value for this method of treatment; the more 
so, as in several other cases, farmers who used heavy dressing of this 
material in spring have been at a great advantage as compared with 
their neighbors, so far as insect injury to corn was concerned. 
The remarkable invasion by the larva of the clover-leaf weevil, which 
I have now observed for four years in succession, started again during 
the present season, and as in all the previous seasons the larvae have 
been swept away before maturity by the fungous disease. This disease 
appears to act irrespective of weather. It seems to make no difference 
whether the season is wet or dry, and possibly this might be a good 
subject to experiment with on some of the other insect pests. 
Blister-beetles have again made their appearance in considerable 
numbers in some few localities and have attacked quite a variety of 
plants. Beets seem to have been rather the favorites during the pres- 
ent year, and after them egg-plants and potatoes have been injured. 
A trouble which was brought to my attention for the first time this 
year, but has probably existed to some extent for several years past, is 
the potato stalk-borer, the larva of Tricliobaris trinotatus. I found 
them early in the present month in Mercer County, and in the fields 
that I examined there was scarcely a vine that was not infested by any- 
