649 
August 15, 
breeze ruffles the surface, except it may be close to 
the edge. By pouring part of the water into another 
bottle and dropping oil on the surface these wigglers 
quickly die. The oil prevents them from obtaining 
air, and also works into their breathing tube. Pour 
the water out into a shallow plate and let it evap¬ 
orate and every wiggler would die. 
Now the salt marsh supplies this great plague of 
Jersey in about the following manner. The insect 
lays her eggs in the mud of hollows and depressions. 
A rain or a high tide fills these holes with water. 
The very nature of the salt marsh prevents rapid 
drainage, and these pools remain until the water 
is evaporated. The eggs hatch in some 16 hours, and 
the pools are rapidly filled with wigglers. Prof. 
Smith says he has found these pools so crowded 
that there were 100 wigglers to the square inch, or 
1,000,000 mosquitoes at one hatching in a pool 10x15 
feet! If the water remain in this pool, and no fish 
find entrance, the greater part of these mosquitoes 
will develop. The males live but a few days, but the 
females live two weeks or more, laying countless 
eggs in the mud for a continuation of the plague, and 
at times rising in vast swarms for a “migration,” 
being blown by the wind sometimes out to sea, but 
more frequently inland, like a curse of blood suckers 
let loose upon the towns and farms. No matter how 
far it may be blown Culex sollicitans seldom or ever 
breeds away from the marsh, and the entire supply 
must come from the stagnant pools. It has long 
been known that during very dry Summers there are 
comparatively few salt marsh mosquitoes, and we 
can easily see why when we understand this life his¬ 
tory. A tide or a rain will fill the pools and start 
the wigglers into life. No more water comes, and in 
all except the deeper pools the moisture evaporates, 
thus killing the partly developed insects. All that 
hatch are those from the few deep pools, and until 
there is a new supply of water no more eggs will 
hatch. The eggs may remain several years in the 
mud and then hatch when the conditions are just 
right. This year there was a swarm in Newark, 
though the nearby marshes had been drained. The 
explanation was that the constant rains of May kept 
water in the pools so that eggs laid in 1905 hatched— 
a thing not likely to happen again. In a wet season 
or where there are many deep pools the conditions 
are exactly reversed, and there will be swarms of 
mosquitoes. With the average “female laying 200 
eggs, with six to nine broods a year and 7,000 wig¬ 
glers living in a square foot of water and 296,289 
acres of tide marsh in New Jersey, we can realize 
the menace to the State when the marsh is left un¬ 
drained. We may also see what happens when water 
cannot collect or remain in those breeding pools. 
When ditches are dug through the marsh a free cir¬ 
culation of water is started. Instead of lying heavy 
and sodden the peat of which the upper marsh is 
composed dries more and more and lets in the air, 
so that the water flows freely. On the day of my 
visit the ditch right behind the machine ran a full 
stream of water, and there was quick drainage away 
from the little pools, some of them alive with wig¬ 
glers. On the following day the ditchers struck an¬ 
other part of the marsh, where for a time the water 
in the ditch was fairly black with the young insects, 
which had evidently hatched by the million. This 
means that before the work is completed there will 
be a swarm of mosquitoes that will make their way 
inland. On one side of the railroad track the marsh 
has been thoroughly ditched and a few deep pools 
filled. There had been an extra high tide 24 hours 
before, yet the ditches had carried all the water away. 
I could not see a single pool or any place where 
water could stand. Before that place was ditched 
there would have been dozens of pools left long 
enough to hatch out millions of mosquitoes. As it 
was there was no chance in sight for such hatching. 
That then is the theory upon which Prof. Smith is 
working—to drain the part of the marsh which is 
not daily covered by the tide. There will be little 
danger where the tide ebbs and flows, because mil¬ 
lions of little fish are brought in, and wherever they 
can go the mosquitoes are cleared out. I will try 
tq tell next week how the ditching is being done. 
h. w. c. 
A HOMEMADE GASOLINE PLOW. 
We have had many questions about gasoline power 
for such work as plowing, harrowing and other tillage 
operations. All who have ever seen an automobile 
know what can be done at hauling loads over a good 
road, but in spite of many reports which we have 
traced down traction engines seem to be little used 
for tillage work except on the large western farms. 
Mr. H. B. Kean, of Ontario Co., N. Y., as the pic¬ 
tures on our first page shows, has partly solved the 
problem with a homemade contrivance. This is what 
he says. 
‘T enclose you a picture, Fig. 286, of a gasoline 
T F**E RURAL NEW-YORKER 
engine which we bought last Fall to do our feed 
grinding, spraying, etc., and this Spring mounted 
upon binder wheels, and as you see in the picture, 
gave it a new job. The engine is only five horse¬ 
power, but it will turn over two acres of ground per 
day in ordinary plowing. In Fig. 285 you see us at 
work in heavy nine-year-old pasture sod. We plowed 
it seven to eight inches deep, but this was almost too 
much strain for an engine of this size. We used 
the bowl-wheel chains to counter-shaft and belt from 
counter-shaft to engine; also made the differential 
gear from the old binder parts. We think it does 
“A JERSEY BIRD." CULEX SOLLICITANS, MUCH 
ENLARGED. Fig. 287. 
pretty well for a homemade affair, especially as we 
had no model to go by in building it. I think with 
a larger size engine, one that would draw about 
three plows instead of one, the cost of plowing would 
be considerably less than by teams, beside the advan¬ 
tage of being able to get the land fitted for the crops 
much sooner.” 
We asked Air. Kean if he had used the outfit for 
harrowing, hauling fruit from the orchard or loads 
from the barn, or similar farm jobs. In reply he 
says: 
“We have used the machine at nearly all the kinds 
of work you have mentioned, and find it takes the 
place of horses in nearly every instance, excepting 
that in some places where the footing is not good— 
on freshly plowed land, etc.—more than five horse¬ 
power (size of my engine) is required to do the work 
[Heavy shading shows the comparatively small area 
where the mosquitoes breed; the lighter shading where the 
mosquitoes go in their migrations.] 
of a three-horse team. I should say that 25 per cent 
more power is required to haul a given load over soft 
plowed ground than where the footing is solid. So 
our main hold was at the plowing. This machine, 
although it is comparatively crude, being, as it is, a 
homemade affair, is not the result of merely a few 
minutes, but several months of deep thought and 
work experimenting were consumed before I could 
hitch to the plow and do business without interrup¬ 
tion. Had I known what T do now I could have 
made this machine in one-fourth the time and at half 
the expense. Regarding the working of wet ground: 
I find that when land is too wet for the machine to 
work on, it is too wet to be plowed for a crop. But 
so far as hauling wagons, etc., its pulling power on 
soft ground could be regulated entirely by the width 
of tires and size of the lugs used on the drive wheels.” 
NOT A FRIEND OF CROWS. 
In regard to that Hope Farm cornfield that the 
crows ruined, I have seen about the same thing my¬ 
self. I have no faith at all in the string, or news¬ 
paper, or any other scarecrow, and even tarred corn 
is sometimes pulled. Here is a plan wdiich has done 
good service several times with crows and at least 
once with doves: Take 10 cents’ worth of strych¬ 
nine. dissolve in as much hot water as two quarts 
of corn will soak up clean. Before light in the 
morning scatter this corn where the crows are work¬ 
ing, and I think you will have no more trouble. I 
am no friend of the crow, and if I was I should 
think more of a field of corn that I had taken as 
much pains with as } r ou did with yours. They tell 
us that the crow destroys lots of insects, etc., but I 
believe that the birds which the crows destroy, by 
eating young birds and eggs, would catch as many in¬ 
sects as the crows do, and not pull* the corn, or steal 
the eggs and young chicks, and do all the other mis¬ 
chief that the crows do. I suppose that it is against 
the law to scatter poison in this way, and it is not 
safe to do it where fowls can get at it, but in a 
back lot I can see no danger, and I know of a case 
where one dose caught 39 crows. I. A. c. 
New York. 
UTILIZING A WET SPOT. 
A few j r ears ago I noticed, when plowing a small 
hollow in a piece of ground recently added to our 
farm, that the soil in this hollow was black and deep, 
and right there I decided that some day I would set 
that land with strawberry plants. But the hollow 
being shaped like a saucer held a good-sized pond of 
water every time there was a heavy rain, so that dis¬ 
posed of the strawberry plan at once, unless the land 
could be drained. Then, too, it was situated at the 
southern base of a hill, and hence was very dry in 
Summer, as I had formerly proved when I tried to 
raise table beets there. The first problem, that of 
drainage, was easy to solve since there is a deep 
gravel pit on one edge of the hollow; so the follow¬ 
ing January I started in with pick and shovel to dig a 
drain. The frost was not deep, and I dug a good 
deep drain from the gravel pit to the spot where 
water lay the deepest in the hollow. In the Spring I 
laid a rock drain which I covered with flat stones 
and on top of that cedar brush. At the inner end 
of the drain a big deep hole was dug and filled with 
rocks, so as to take in water as rapidly as it should 
flow over the land, only about 10 to 12 inches of 
dirt being put back in the top of the drain—or in 
other words just enough so the plow would not take 
up rocks when passing over the drain. Conditions 
of drought are much harder to fight unless water 
can be supplied, but not being able to water the 
ground artificially, I determined to try to save the 
Winter rains for Summer use, and to this end I got 
out a lot of meadow muck or “peat,” which was left 
in small piles over Winter and spread evenly in the 
Spring. A good coat of hen manure was also applied, 
and after plowing the ground, about 150 pounds of 
high grade fertilizer containing seven per cent sul¬ 
phate of potash was harrowed in, and the piece set, 
mainly to Bubach and Dunlap strawberries. These 
made splendid growth, were covered with pine needles 
late in the Fall and wintered finely, having no in¬ 
jury either from water or “heaving” of the ground. 
There was very little over one-eighth of an acre of 
ground in the piece. The drought at fruiting time 
was the worst for years, but that little patch yielded 
just about 400 quarts of big handsome berries, and the 
vines remained fresh and bright up to the last pick¬ 
ing. The bed was picked about eight times. A few 
plants each of Fairfield and Morning Star were set 
on this piece, but both proved failures, though the 
latter would have done very well but for lack of 
foliage; also I had a few rows of Success on this 
land, which, by no means worthless, proved to be far 
inferior to Bubach or Dunlap. The crop came very 
early, and brought the highest prices. 
ALBERT T. TENNEY. 
FREEDOM FROM TOTATO BT.IGHT.—While it is 
true that the Totato blight and rot are much more severe 
in some sections than in others, I think it is quite safe 
to say that there is no place either in Pennsylvania or 
New York where blight is wholly absent. However, in 
some seasons certain localities may be wholly free from 
the late blight; that is the kind which first kills the 
tops and later causes the tubers to rot. This is most 
likely to be the case in very dry seasons; with the return 
of wet weather the blight and rot reappear. 
Geneva Station. F - c • Stewart. 
