CANTALOUP CULTURE 
dividual plants when the thinning is done. 
Owing to the injuries from the striped cu- 
cumber beetle, the thinning should be de- 
layed until the plants have about the 
fifth leaf, when the beetle will not do 
much more injury; the extra plants in 
the hill should be destroyed by pinching 
or cutting off the stems, as pulling them 
out may disturb the plants to be left. 
Insect Enemies 
No sooner has the seed germinated 
than the struggle for existence begins; 
an effectual precaution is to plant plenty 
of seed scattering it well in the hill, and 
even replanting before it is evidently nec- 
essary—usually some replanting is re- 
quired anyway. Crop rotation, also, is 
often a good way of avoiding infested 
fields, in fact, “prevention is better than 
cure,” in fighting insects and plant dis- 
eases, 
The destruction of insect harbors such 
as weeds, old vines and plants, should 
be given more consideration, and the cul- 
tivation of the fields in the late fall, win- 
ter and early spring, will destroy many 
eges and insects that pass the winter in 
the soil—grasshoppers and cutworms, for 
instance. 
The Striped Cucumber Beetle 
This little black and yellow striped bee- 
tle, about a quarter of an inch long, is 
doubtless one of the most common melon 
pests, especially when the plants are 
young and in the two-leaf stage; long lists 
of remedies have been tried, but the best 
that experienced entomologists have to 
suggest is to spray the little plants as 
soon as possible with arsenate of lead, at 
about the usual three pounds to the fifty- 
gallon formula. 
The beetles are not killed by this rem- 
edy, but it acts as an efficient repellent. 
Spraying with the Bordeaux mixture is 
also recommended, but the Bordeaux is 
better for the little black flea-beetles when 
they bother, as they do at times, but they 
usually work more on the cabbage, radish 
and turnip. The best means of apply- 
ing sprays to small plants is the small 
type of sprayer that can be easily carried 
over the field, the type that has an air 
chamber in which pressure is pumped in, 
749 
and that has a cut-off on the nozzle that 
works like a trigger, thus allowing the 
hills to be sprayed with little waste of 
the material. A very good spray pump 
of this type is The Brown Auto Spray 
No. 1, manufactured by The E. C. Brown 
Co., Rochester, N. Y. 
Dusting the hills with air-slacked lime, 
through a common cheese cloth sack, is 
an old means of fighting the beetles but 
is not as effective as the aresenate of 
lead spray. 
The Melon Aphis 
The melon aphis is doubtless the most 
serious pest that the cantaloup has to 
contend with in many places, and one 
against which resistance is least effectual 
where conditions are favorable to the 
aphis. 
Fortunately for the growers the nat- 
ural enemies of the aphis usually hold 
them in check quite effectually; the lady- 
beetle, the Syrphus flies and the lace- 
winged fly are the principal enemies to 
the aphis; some seasons a little parasitic 
fly destroys many aphis. 
The only effective measure seems to 
be a careful watch of the fields to de- 
stroy the first plants found to be infected 
with aphis, as it seems that only a few 
insects are able to pass the winter, and 
they seem to spread from a few isolated 
points, and if these can be destroyed by 
finding them and burying them, early, this 
has seemed to be the only plan to adopt, 
as spraying and fumigation has been 
tried by the most competent experts with 
very unsatisfactory results. 
Spraying with “Blackleaf 40,” one 
ounce to ten gallons of water, with a little 
soap, say seven ounces, is the most ef- 
fective spray where a few hills become 
infested, but where the whole field be- 
comes infested spraying has proven use- 
less. 
The introduction of the natural ene- 
mies, like the lady-beetles, has been tried 
in California with some promise, but this 
plan is in an experimental stage as yet. 
The necessity of supplying the enemy as 
soon as the aphis appears, makes this 
plan rather impractical for the grower. 
Destroying the winter harbor or host 
