STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
535 
WIREWORMS. TRAPPED BT POTATOES, APPLES, AC. HAND-PICKING. 
eral does great injury to the grain crop which succeeds. It should 
he noticed that clover or other plants of such description, give 
protection to this insect; it is bred in the roots of these plants, and 
the land is so well stocked with it, that it attacks the grain and 
other succeeding crops very much to their injury. Land of this 
description is therefore unfit for grain immediately on breaking up. 
Turnips or potatoes are not so liable to injury from this insect; 
but the best preventive is probably a summer fallow, and burning 
the rubbish on the land before cropping, by which means the eggs 
which are laid in the stalks arc destroyed, and the live worms die 
for want of nourishment. Soot and lime will also kill this destruc¬ 
tive worm. Before breaking up old lays, it should always be a 
point with the farmer to examine the then existing crop, and 
observe if any of these insects are in the roots and stalks, and if 
so, to apply the above as a preventive previous to sowing a crop 
of grain in the laud. 
As the wireworms are fond of the potato, it was long since 
recommended by Sir Joseph Banks to employ slices of this tuber 
as a trap with which to catch them. Several contributors to the 
Gardener’s Chronicle concur in this as being the best mode of 
freeing the garden at least, from this troublesome visitor. One of 
these merits to be here transcribed. Mr. Adan says (vol. iii, p. 
301): “ I send you an account of destroying the wireworm, which 
I have adopted for some years, my ground being full of them, so 
that I could neither grow sweet-williams, picotees, bulbs, lettuces, 
nor indeed any succulent plant, without their boring, running up 
and eating the hearts out. Near these plants I now place half a 
potato, with the eyes cut out to prevent its growing, and run a 
pointed stick through the middle of it, and peg it into the ground, 
covering it over with about one inch of loam, and in a day or two 
I have pulled out by the tail from fifteen to twenty of them from 
one slice ot potato.” It is recommended by some persons to lay 
the slices of potato on the surface, although there are others who 
consider that they may be buried two or three inches deep. 
Slices of turnip, cabbage, beet, parsnip, carrot, apple, and young 
lettuce plants, it is reported will answer the purpose equally well 
as the potato. 
Many think highly of hand-picking, its effects being certain, 
and being done by children is not expensive. In Kirby and 
Spence’s Entomology, p. 104, it is stated that Mr. G. Pearce of 
