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Canadian Agriculture. 
Cultivation of Beet. — Several reliable authorities are of opinion 
that the beet-root sugar industry is as capable of successful pro- 
secution in Canada as in Central Russia, and it is even main- 
tained that the cultivation of the sugar-beet in Quebec would 
prove as beneficial to that Province as it did to France. I 
would, however, venture to suggest that, in case the industry is 
established, the roots should not be purchased by weight, as has 
been the custom in France, but according to their richness in 
sugar, after the German method. The former system has led 
the French beet-root growers to adopt the most lavish dressings 
of manure in order to swell the tonnage per acre, and they 
have succeeded, but only at a considerable sacrifice of the 
saccharine properties of the roots. Perhaps, too, as maize grows 
so freely in Quebec, the adoption of the rotation recently recom- 
mended to the French farmers, in the Annales Agronomiques, by 
Professor Deherain, would be a step in the right direction. 
Injurious Insects. — The annual loss which Canadian farmers 
sustain through the ravages of injurious insects is appalling. 
Mr. J. Fletcher, Vice-President of the Entomological Society 
of Ontario, says that, taking the average annual farm-produce of 
Canada at only 40,000,000/., which is the lowest possible esti- 
mate, the lowest figure at which he can put the injury done by 
insects is one-tenth of the whole, or 4,000,000/. ; he believes 
that the ravages of the wheat-midge, the Hessian fly, and par- 
ticularly the clover-seed midge, are all preventible. Mr. W. H. 
Harrington, Ottawa, says it was in 1856 or 1857 that the 
wheat-midge — whose orange-coloured larvae in the furrow of 
the young grain are well known to English farmers — first 
appeared in Canada, and the damage it did to the wheat-crop 
in Ontario in one of those years was estimated at 1,600,000/. 
It had previously, in 1854, been very destructive in the United 
States, where it was introduced from Europe about the beginning 
of the present century. Of late years the damage has been 
lessened in Canada by using midge-proof wheat. Certain 
varieties of wheat, producing an inferior grain, and a hard coat, 
were found not to be touched by the midge. These were 
hybridised with wheat yielding a good grain, and the result was 
a better quality of grain, retaining the hardness of coat which 
baffles the attacks of the midge. Similarly the Hessian fly has 
been dealt with by producing plants with heavier stalks. This 
pest feeds in the joint of the stalk above the root, and if the 
stalk is too hard for it, not much harm is done. Mr. L. Van 
Camp, of Bow manville, Ontario, a farmer delegate from the 
Dominion (Jrange, says : — 
" As for the insect scoiirsje in agriculture, it places tlic agriculturist in a 
continual warfare from the time the frost leaves the soil in the spring until it 
