45 



4. Wire-Worms, or Click-Beetles ( Elateridce ). 



Figure 25 represents one of our commonest elaters, the eyed elater, 

 Alaus oculatus. Several species are noticed as attacking various 

 crops, especially barley. Among the remedies employed we may 

 quote : — " A solution of carbonate of soda, in the proportion of 

 about two ounces to sixteen quarts of water, applied three or more times 

 from the beginning of May to the beginning of June is found a good 

 way to clear the ground." An observer notes " wire-worms in consider- 

 able numbers attacking barley sown after dead fallow. He drilled 

 Lawes' turnip manure with the bulk of the field, and on this the 

 barley grew rapidly away from the wire-worm ; whilst on two pieces, 

 each seven feet wide, left across the field without the manure, more 

 than half the plants were destroyed. This difference is noted as 

 having been observed on previous occasions. Stirring the land well is 

 considered the best remedy with root crops. Amongst corn (wheat) 

 crops rolling with a heavy roller, or if possible, on the lighter soils with a clod-crusher, 

 is the usual remedy. In one case the object is to solidify the surface and so stop the 

 wire- worms working ; in the other (the root and green crops) to stimulate growth in the 

 young plants, besides disturbing the larvae." 



In the last Report it is stated that the wire-worms did " much damage on some light- 

 land farms, and the young barley after fallow, and where the land was in bad condition ; 

 but where the barley succeeded a good crop of roots, fed on the land by sheep, or where 

 there was plenty of manure in the soil, the plants grew too vigorously to receive much 

 injury. On heavy clay land the soil was so close that the wire-worm could hardly exist." 



5. The Wheat Midge (Cecidomyia tritici ). 



Our dreaded pest is the same insect as that here referred to as prevalent in England. 



See figure 26. In 1877 it was reported as unusually abun- 

 dant in Hertfordshire and unusually absent in Essex. It is 

 noteworthy that "in the latter county the chaff is used for 

 cattle, whilst the custom prevailed in some parts of the 

 west of England of throwing the chaff in heaps to decay, 

 thus providing the maggot with good shelter during the 

 winter to develop in the following June, and so infest the 

 neighbourhood. " 



In 1878 it was again unusually abundant at the same 

 place in Hertfordshire "in all the early wheat, many ears 

 having from 10 to 15 kernels quite destroyed, besides others 

 being deformed ; the later crops were not so much affected." 

 The same year it was also abundant in parts of Devon- 

 shire. A writer relates that the wheat in his experimental 

 field " stood up well at the time of cutting, but that just 

 before blooming, portions were covered by small flies which 

 deposited their eggs in the ear, and these developed into small orange-coloured maggots, 

 which fed on the young grain. The unmanured crop came into ear some days later than 

 the manured crops, and escaped injury from the fly, whereas the plot manured every year 

 with fourteen tons of farm-yard dung suffered severely, and yielded only about two-thirds 

 as much grain as in 1868, when the weight of straw was about the same as this year. It 

 is, " of course," he adds, "very difficult to estimate the damage clone to a crop by the ravages 

 of an insect, but that in the permanent wheat field undoubtedly suffered considerably from 

 that cause. The yield of grain was not only much less than would be expected from the 

 bulk of straw and its upright condition at the time of cutting, but also much less than 

 would be judged from the amount of produce and proportion of grain to straw in the 

 neighbouring field." 



