STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
539 
WIREWORMS. REMEDIES. PALL PLOWING OF LAND. 
worms in tea-cups, filled with different substances, and found 
the result to be as follows: Amongst garlic, the worms lived 
nine days; in water, four days; among leaves of the spruce fir, 
fourteen hours; leaves of the fir, ten hours; leaves of Ledum 
palustre, nine hours; leaves of the Dutch myrtle or sweet gale, 
Myrica gale, two hours. From these results, he thinks “it ought 
to be tried how useful it might be, in winter and summer, to mix 
in the heaps of manure fir leaves, Ledum palustre and Myrica gale, 
of which vegetables the dung would smell, which might probably 
be disagreeable to the vermin; and if they did not die in conse¬ 
quence of it, they might, perhaps, leave the fields.” 
The late Judge Delafield in his Agricultural Survey of Seneca 
County (Transactions New York State Agricultural Society for 
1850, p. 523), closes a brief account of the wire-worm with the 
statement that exposure to the frosts of winter will destroy them; 
thererore autumn plowing is essential. Upon this measure it is 
remarked editorally in the Country Gentleman, and in the Culti¬ 
vator, 1859, p. 107, that by fall plowing the winter arrangements 
of these worms are disturbed, and their lives finished by the ex¬ 
treme cold. A repetition of this course for a few years will lessen 
their numbers materially. To fit sward land which was infested 
with wireworms, for corn, we should manure and then plow imme¬ 
diately before planting. By this means the worms would be 
buried out of the way, and supplied with plenty of food in the 
roots of the grass, so that they would not injure the corn to any 
extent; such has been the experience of many farmers. For any 
crop suited to green sward, the same would be a good course; but 
beyond corn and potatoes, there are few crops which succeed well, 
aud hence most would do better if the sward were plowed late in 
the fall. Land planted to corn as above, should invariably be 
plowed in autumn for the next crop, or the product would be likely 
to be destroyed or largely injured by this pest. An efiectual 
method to rid the land of wireworm is to plow very late in the 
fall, and work thoroughly the next season, until time to sow buck¬ 
wheat, which if sowed the next year also — following the same plan 
of fall plowing and culture — will totally eradicate them, giving at 
the same time two valuable crops. The Rural New Yorker (1866, 
p. 357) also directs to fall plow late, sow two barrels of salt per 
acre, and manure well the next spring; and your chances will bo 
good for a paying crop. On the other hand, a correspondent 
