534 
ANNUAL REPORT OF NEW YORK 
WIREWORMS. THEIR HABITS. REMEDIES. 
and pierce it with holes in every direction, the only indication of 
their presence being the dying of the plant. 
Mr. Curtis observes that, as the wire-worms will not voluntarily 
leave the field in which they were hatched, until they have arrived 
at their perfect state and become beetles, it is impossible by any 
change of crops to remedy the evil, unless we could discover some 
vegetable which they absolutely dislike—or, by plowing,' harrow¬ 
ing and keeping the soil perfectly free from weeds or plants of 
every kind, especially the grasses, they might be starved out. 
Whether they can fast for a long period is very doubtful, for it is 
principally in their perfect state that insects can live without food 
for an extraordinary space of time. Some importance, however, 
must be attached to the generally received opinion that it is in all 
probability whilst the surface of the field is undisturbed that the 
eggs are deposited. Consequently the crops that follow pasture 
land when broken up, are most likely to fall a sacrifice, for several 
succeeding years; and it will be the same when clover ground is 
plowed up; whereas, when the ground is occupied with potatoes, 
corn, and similar crops, no eggs, or very few, are laid in the field; 
but many of those which had been deposited from one to four 
years previously in the grass are hatching one after another, and 
the larvae are gradually increasing in size and appetite, and conse¬ 
quently becoming daily more mischievous. If a grain crop follow 
potatoes in a field infested by wireworms, it will be liable to suffer 
greatly. Bjerkander says, “ In the spring and autumn they have 
good appetites, and I have often observed that a single worm has 
bitten from eight, twelve, to twenty stalks in one place; and if 
one destroys so much, what may not thousands do ?” And it will 
be almost useless to resow the ground where a crop has been des¬ 
troyed by wireworms, unless the soil be first freed from them by 
repeated plowings, when poultry, birds, and the frosts of winter 
may have lessened their numbers; and tho farmer must remember 
that the wireworms cannot possibly increase in number unless fresh 
eggs be laid by the snapping-beotles, and of this, there can bo no 
danger from the end of September to the end of March. 
With regard to the best modes of culture for keeping the wire- 
worm in check, Mr. Salisbuiy, in his Hints to Proprietors of 
Orchards, page 109, gives the following sensible advice: It is an 
insect much complained of by farmers whenever they turn up 
land that has been cultivated with clover or grass, and it in gen- 
