STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
805 
CUT-WORMS. EARLY NOTICES AND RECORDS OP TREIR INJURIES. 
scnce of this worm in our country, the labor of the husbandman is fre¬ 
quently doubled to obtain from his land a crop either materially diminished 
in amount or of a less valuable kind from that which he would be able to 
harvest were it not for this enemy. The attention of the farmers of our 
State was this past season prominently directed to the rearing of flax, and 
a breadth of land was given to this crop far exceeding what has ever be¬ 
fore been assigned to it. But soon after the young flax appeared above 
the ground, these Out-worms began their depredations, feeding upon and 
wholly consuming the small tender plants to such an extent that many fields 
had large patches in them which were eaten perfectly bare, whilst in others 
the crop-was totally destroyed. 
Many of our injurious insects are new pests which have but recently 
been observed in our country. But these Out-worms appear always to 
have been here, depredating upon and despoiling the cultivated crops in 
centuries gone by, the same that they are now doing. Before European 
settlers arrived upon this continent, the cornfields of the Indians are said 
to have been ravaged at times by these worms, this being of all others a 
disaster to them of which they were most fearful, and one which they felt 
themselves wholly powerless to avert, their only resort for protecting their 
fields from this calamity being that indicated in the lines of the poet: 
e< Di&w a magio circle round them, 
So that neither blight nor mildew. 
Neither burrowing worm nor insect 
Shall pass o’er the magio circle . 55 
And this is well known to have been a casualty of frequent occurrence, all 
along since the soil of our country has been cultivated by civilized men. 
In those diaries which have occasionally been kept in different parts of our 
land by persons who have been curious to preserve a record of local inci¬ 
dents of interest, we are sure to meet ever and auon with the statement, 
“Indian corn was this year greatly injured by the worms,” “The season 
was wet and cold, and the worms made extensive ravages on the corn,” 
and other entries of the same purport. From one of these sources we learn 
that a century ago there had been a distressing drouth in 1761, followed 
by an unusually long and severe winter and a late spring. “ When at last 
the corn was planted, millions of worms appeared to eat it up, and the 
ground must be planted again and again. Thus many fields were utterly 
ruined.” (Flint’s Second Report, Mass. Board of Agriculture, p. 40.) It, 
however, may have been the Wire-worm which occasioned at least a por¬ 
tion of the destruction here related, for usually when one of these worms is 
numerous the other is so likewise. It is unnecessary to mention other years 
in which we have little more than the mere fact stated that these corn 
worms were very injurious. 
In addition to such manuscript mementoes, the published allusions to these 
Pests date far back. Upwards of seventy years ago, when the old Agri¬ 
cultural Society of our State was first organized, in a circular which the 
Society issued, containing inquiries upon different topics on which inlbrma- 
hon was solicited, the first query respecting insects was, “ Is there any 
