1897 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER. 
275 
get started sufficiently to hold its own, and the result 
is that the grass is stunted if not killed outright. 
For seed, I would use principally a mixture of 
Orchard, June, Fescue and Red-top for grass, and 
Medium, Alsike and White clovers. The Medium and 
Alsike clovers would be likely to make a good growth 
the first summer after sowing, and the White would 
reseed itself after once established. As for clearing 
the land with dynamite, I have had no experience ; 
but from what inquiry I have made as to this method, 
I do not believe that there is an acre of sprout land 
in New England that for use as pasture alone would 
repay for clearing of the stumps, either by dynamite 
or otherwise. Here in a climate with its parching 
summer drought and myriads of grass-eating insects, 
a permanent pasture of much value is an impossi¬ 
bility. F. A. PUTNAM. 
Massachusetts. 
An Opinion from Connecticut. 
We have a considerable amount of land—tillage, 
pasture, stump land, etc.—butithas never been neces¬ 
sary for us to clear stump land, or to get such land 
into pasture, as we already have land enough. I 
have had to clear off small growth of wood from 
pastures, and have had to take up quite a number 
of large stumps. I have tried dynamite on large 
stumps, but did not succeed very well; the most 
I could get of a result was to loosen or 
shatter the stumps 
so that they were 
easier to take out 
some other way. I 
have found the 
Hawkeye stump 
puller, a machine 
operated by a horse 
or yoke of cattle, 
one of the best for 
pulling stumps. But, 
though I have had 
no practical experi¬ 
ence in gettingsuch 
sprout land into pas¬ 
ture, I am willing to 
offer my opinion as 
to what would be 
the best way to get 
the land into pas¬ 
ture. If, as I sup¬ 
pose, the stumps are 
good size and not 
very close together, 
it would be compar¬ 
atively easy to get 
it into grass, espe¬ 
cially if the roots 
were of a kind that 
go down into the 
ground like oak and 
cherry, and not cov¬ 
ering the top of the 
ground like elm or 
maple. In the 
latter case, I should think it would be best to 
let the ground grow up again to timber ; but in 
the former, if I thought there was no great danger 
of breaking the harrows on the roots, I would cut up 
between the stumps with the Morgan spading harrow, 
aDd seed down in August or early September, with a 
mixture of Red-top and Timothy and, perhaps, a little 
Blue grass, if it is not already in the soil. In the last 
snows of March, sow some clover seed, and it will 
come, and helps the pasture for a year or two. I do 
not believe in spring seeding to grass ; it is too risky 
with US. THOMAS J. STROUD. 
Connecticut. 
HEADING OFF CANKERWORMS. 
BANDS TO CHECK THEIR CLIMBING. 
Of the whole list of insects that infest the orchard, 
none is more open in its work and more easily ex¬ 
terminated than the Cankerworm ; yet this msect is 
now doing more damage than any other. One of the 
reasons for the indifference is the fact that most 
farmers don’t know that they have them in such 
numbers until they get so large that it is hard to 
combat them. It does not seem to be generally 
known that nine-tenths or more of the eggs are laid 
in the extreme top of the tree. Because he doesn’t 
see any young worms on the lower branches, the 
orchardist thinks that he has none, while at the same 
time, every leaf in the top may have from one to a half 
score, and by the time they are spread to the lower 
limbs, they have done the bulk of the damage. Then 
it is 10 times as hard to kill them when so large as 
when they were just hatched. 
While there is not the least doubt that, by thorough 
spraying with the arsenites when the worms are small, 
they can be entirely eradicated, it will be found a 
great help to band the trees, and to put such a prepa¬ 
ration on the bands as shall prevent the ascent of the 
females to deposit their eggs. If this be done early 
and followed up persistently, so few females will get 
up the trees, that the number of worms will not be 
great enough to do much injury. While it is better 
both to band and spray so as to exterminate them, 
banding alone will so keep them in check that the in¬ 
jury will not be serious. One of the defects in the 
banding of the trees is the difficulty of finding a sticky 
substance that shall not coat over in a short time so 
as not to catch the moths. I have tried Dendroline 
and Raupenleim and all the other recommended 
things that have, from time to time, been praised ; 
but I have not found anything to use on coarse paper 
bands, if they are used, better than pine tar, if fresh. 
By adding castor oil and crude petroleum, it will be 
made more limpid, and will retain its “stickiness ” 
longer. Common resin-sized building paper may be 
cut in strips four inches wide, to be drawn around 
the tree and tacked with small tacks with a tack 
stuck so as to hold the paper into every little depres¬ 
sion ; this is then coated with tar for two-thirds its 
width, to be removed once in two days, and very few 
moths will get above it. 
I have found a better thing which I purpose to use 
this year. I have secured a lot of heavy glazed paper, 
the “sulphide paper” which is waterproof, and have 
cut this into strips on a circle so that, when brought 
about the trees, the bottom will stand out an inch or 
so from the body. These strips are three inches wide, 
and as the paper cost eight cents per pound, they cost 
one-fourth cent each. To cut these, I made a wooden 
pattern and bound the edge with iron so as not to be 
cutting the pattern when cutting against the edge. 
A few little brads or sharp points should be put into 
the under side so as to hold the paper. As the inside 
and outside curves will not be alike, all the cutting 
can be done on one side by simply moving it back 
each time the width of the center, and leaving the 
ends a trifle the widest. To make these fit so snugly 
against the tree that no moth can get under, when a 
lot of bands are cut, they can be slipped back so as to 
expose about an inch of the inner edge, and by having 
some strips of cotton wadding about one inch wide 
cut ready, these edges can be coated with mucilage 
or glue and the wadding stuck on. When the band 
is put about the tree (see Fig. 120), these strips of 
wadding will fit every crack and crevice. If a band is 
too long for a small tree, it may be lapped over to fit 
it; if not long enough, another piece may be lapped 
on at each end. Where these glazed bands are used, 
not one female moth in ten can crawl over them, even 
if not coated with anything ; but by melting together 
resin, Venice turpentine, and castor oil, of each equal 
parts, a very adhesive compound will be formed, and 
one that will remain sticky in the coldest weather 
and keep its stickiness for several days. This is 
what the “ Tanglefoot ” fly paper is made of, and 
everybody who has used that knows that no insects 
can set foot on it and get away. 
While this preparation will cost more than the tar, 
it will remain sticky much longer, and really is much 
more adhesive in the beginning. I have been trying 
it during cold weather, and believe that, by renew¬ 
ing the coating once a week, no moth can get over it. 
When the bands need recoating, by having the mix¬ 
ture slightly warm, one can coat several hundred in 
an hour, and each time they are covered they are 
better than when new. j. s. woodward. 
Niagara County, N. Y. 
The Farmers’ Club. 
[Every query must be accompanied by the name and address of 
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see whether it is not answered in our advertising columns. Ask 
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piece of paper.l 
What Is Onion Smut ? 
fV. B., Ti'oujisville, iV. Y .—I have grown onions for 10 years on 
the same plot. This year, when the bulbs were one-fourth grown, 
the tops began to die of some disease. Was it smut? We call it 
blight. Would it be advisable to change plots, using ground 
which has not grown onions ? 
ANSWERED BY M. Y. SUNDERLAND. 
Onion smut is a fungous disease which has been 
known to occur in America for about 30 years, and it 
is now widely distributed in the United States east of 
the Mississippi River ; it is especially destructive in 
the onion-growing regions of Connecticut. According 
to Dr. Thaxter, “The presence of smut in onions is 
first indicated by one or several dark spots at different 
heights in the leaves of seedlings, which are seen to 
be more or less opaque when the plant is held up to 
the light. These 
dark appearances 
may be seen in the 
first leaf, before the 
second leaf has be¬ 
gun to develop at 
all, and are more 
commonly found 
just below the 
‘knee.’ After a 
time, usually while 
the second leaf is 
developing, longi¬ 
tudinal cracks begin 
to appear in one side 
of these spots, 
which widen and 
show within a dry, 
fibrous mass, cov¬ 
ered with a black, 
sooty powder made 
up wholly of the 
ripened fruit or 
spores of the fungus, 
which are blown or 
washed out into the 
ground. As a rule, 
the same dark ap¬ 
pearance shows it¬ 
self in the second 
leaf and those sub¬ 
sequently formed, 
and if the seedling 
be pulled and ex¬ 
amined, the whole 
plant will be found to be pervaded by the dis¬ 
ease, to a greater or less extent. Plants thus 
diseased, especially if the soil is dry, m.y com¬ 
monly succumb early, dying while in thg second 
or third leaf. The stronger plants, however, espec¬ 
ially if the ground is moist, are able to resist the smut 
sufficiently to make a considerable growth, and may 
survive even up to the time of harvesting. In such 
specimens, the smut shows itself by black elevations 
upon the bulb, running down to its very base, and ex¬ 
tending upward into the leaves, the outer ones of 
which may split open and show the characteristic 
sooty powder composed of spores mingled with the 
stringy mass of dead leaf tissue. As a rule, such onions 
always die, either drying up or rotting soon after they 
are pulled.” 
When onions are grown upon the same land for sev¬ 
eral successive seasons, the smut, after it once gets 
started, gradually increases, until, at the end of five 
or more years, the soil is so full of smut that the field 
generally must be abandoned and some other crop 
substituted. But even then the smut remains in the 
soil several years—according to some observers, as 
many as 12—in such a condition that onions cannot 
be safely planted. The local dissemination of the 
smut is due to four principal causes : Agricultural 
implements spread the soil containing the spores. 
Smutted earth adheres to the feet of men and farm 
animals, and is thus distributed from field to field. 
The spores are readily washed, with surface earth, 
from higher to lower ground. With other dust-like 
material, the spores may be blown about by the wind. 
The simplest method of avoiding injury by onion 
smut is to transfer the planting to new land when¬ 
ever the disease becomes destructive. It has already 
been stated that infection by smut takes place before 
POTATO PLANTS AS STARTED AT THE NEW JERSEY STATION. Fig. 119. 
The sulphured “seed” is shown at 1; no treatment at 2, and fertilizers at 3, 4 and 5. 
