INJURIOUS INSECTS, 93 



recommended for cabbage worms and it is also subject to dis- 

 eases and parasites. 



Wire Worms or Drill Worms (Elator). — Wire worms cause 

 damage by boring into potatoes and some seeds in the ground. 

 They are the larvae of a snapping or clicking beetle, so called 

 from the ease with v/hich, if laid on their backs, they spring 

 into the air with a clicking noise. The larvae are slender wire- 

 like worms having a glassy tough skin of a yellowish or brown- 

 ish color. The larvae stage lasts for two and possibly five years; 

 it is therefore no small job to clear a piece of land badly in- 

 fested with the pest. Naturally, wire worms live in grass land 

 where the harm they do is not apparent, but when such land is 

 planted to corn or potatoes and the worms are thus depived of 

 their natural food they may become very troublesome. 



Remedies. — Late fall plowing is desirable for land infested 

 with wire worms since it exposes and thus kills all that are 

 ready to pupate. By clean summer fallowing the land one season 

 the worms are starved out, if no plants whatever are permitted 

 to grow on it. 



Cut Worms (Agrotis sp.). — Cut worms often cause serious 

 injury by eating vegetable plants. They are generally most in- 



Figure 38. — Cut worm and moth. 



jurious while the plants are small, when they often bite off 

 young cabbage, bean, corn or other plants close to or just under 

 the ground and thus destroy them. Their work is most percep- 

 tible in the spring on account of the small amount of growing 

 vegetation at that time, yet they also work in the autumn. True 

 cut worms are the larvae of several night flying moths which 

 appear late in summer. The female deposits her eggs late in 

 the summer. These soon hatch into worms which enter the 



