1874.] 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
19 
sucli as towage upon the river and at New 
York; and in addition, as the boat may be of 
service after the canals are closed, the expense 
of her annual maintenance need not be con¬ 
densed into the actual season of work upon the 
canals. It may be that there are still further 
improvements possible in this link of Western 
transportation; but if nothing further is 
achieved the cost of transit for a bushel of 
grain between the foot of lake transportation 
and the head of sea transportation may doubt¬ 
less be reduced 75 per cent, and by so much 
the Western farmer’s pocket will be enriched. 
When to Flow Cranberries to Kill 
Worms. 
We have received the following statement 
from a gentleman who has a plantation of 
cranberries at Thom’s River, N. J ,which, as it 
contains the record of a common error and 
consequent failure, will be interesting to many 
of our readers: “I cleared up eight acres of 
swamp five years ago, built two dams, care¬ 
fully cultivated, and in due time the vines cov¬ 
ered the marsh, and last June the blooms liter¬ 
ally covered the vines, giving promise of richly 
rewarding me for all my labor. I saw some 
indications of the worms webbing the vines on 
the 4th of July. I immediately stopped the 
water an the upper piece for 24 hours, and 
then let it on to the lower the same l°ngth 
of time; but a short time after I perceived 
that what the worms had not destroyed the 
blight from some unknown cause had. So I 
only got 17 barrels where I should have had 
200 at least. The worm looks like an apple- 
worm, and webs the tops of the vines together 
and kills leaves and blooms. I perceived some 
of them this fall as I was cleaning them out 
How would it do to hold the water on the 
vines until May 15tli, and then flood them 
once a week for twelve hours until June 15th, 
and then flood them twice a week until 
July 15th ?” 
This vine worm of which our correspondent 
speaks is the “Tortrix mcciniiwrana, or the 
Cranberry-destroying Leaf-roller,” so called by 
Dr. Packard in his work, Guide to the Study 
of Insects. It feeds naturally upon the huckle¬ 
berry, and possibly upon other members of 
the heath family, and for this reason it is 
exceedingly desirable that huckleberry brush 
should be cleaned up and destroyed in the 
vicinity of a cranberry bog. The insect is 
known under the various names of “ Web- 
worm,” from the web which it spins, the “Fire- 
worm,” from its destructive effect upon the 
vines, and “ Vine-worm.” The parent of this 
worm is a small cream-colored moth without 
any distinct markings. When at rest it is 
about one-fourth of an inch in length, and ex¬ 
pands about one-half an inch. The moth sur¬ 
vives the winter, finding shelter upon the vines 
and under the bark of trees, in bunches of 
weeds and grass, and especially in turf fences 
such as are often left around the borders of 
cranberry plantations. The moths which sur¬ 
vive the winter mate and deposit their eggs on 
the leaves of the cranberry vines from the 
middle of April to the 1st of May. In a week 
or ten days the eggs hatch, and the worms be¬ 
gin to feed on the under side of the leaves. In 
a few days more they begin to make their web 
and draw the tops of the vines together. It 
feeds for about three weeks, becomes a chrys¬ 
alis, and by the tenth of June a moth appears, 
and after a few w’e'eks spent in mating and lay¬ 
ing eggs a second generation of the larvae ap¬ 
pears about the second week of July. When 
the season is favorable, and there is no hin- 
derance to their work, they will very soon de¬ 
stroy that portion of the cranberry meadow 
which they attack. The remedy for this pest 
is seasonable flowage, which our correspondent 
seems to have neglected. In the first place, 
the banks of the cranberry meadow should be 
cleaned of all brush, trees, and turf fences in 
which the moths can find lodging during the 
winter. Then the vines should be flowed to a 
depth of thirty inches from the 1st of Novem¬ 
ber to the 10th of May. This will make sure 
of the destruction of all moths that may have 
taken refuge in the vines in the fall, and pre¬ 
vent the depositing of the first brood of eggs. 
It is a good thing for the vines to have the 
benefit of the sun for two or three weeks in 
May. Then about the 25th of May the water 
should be put on again and kept on for five or 
six days. This will destroy the second brood 
of eggs if any moths should come in from the 
neighboring brush or vines to lay them. If 
these two broods of worms are destroyed there 
is not much danger for the rest of the season, 
and we are inclined to think the water after 
the 1st of July does more harm than good. 
While the vines are in bloom and the young 
fruit is setting the water must be injurious. It 
is settled in the experience of our best cultivat¬ 
ors that water is a complete remedy for this 
pest, where the flowage is entire and no other 
plant-food for the insect is allowed to grow 
near. But if a part of the bog remains uncov¬ 
ered, and the moths find a refuge, they will not 
only hold their own, but make inroads upon 
the part that is flowed. The blight of which 
our correspondent speaks is either the result of 
his mid-summer flowing, or, more likely, the 
scald, which is the greatest trouble now with 
the New Jersey cultivators, and which seems 
to be imperfectly understood. It is the special 
affliction of new plantations. After the ground 
is completely covered with vines there is much 
less of this difficulty. 
American Potatoes in England. 
The attitude of the English in regard to our 
American varieties of potatoes is something 
that quite passes our comprehension. They 
are written down as absolutely worthless, and 
yet the prize lots at the exhibitions consist 
largely of American s^rts. Writers for the 
English press condemn the varieties over their 
own signatures, and the very same men write 
to our dealers for prices by the large quantity. 
We say we do not understand it, as we dislike 
to think that national prejudice can have any 
influence in so important a matter The ques¬ 
tion of the excellence of some, at least, of our 
varieties of potato would seem to be effectually 
set at rest. Last fall Messrs. B. K. Bliss & Sons 
sent a collection of our potatoes to Dr. M. T. 
Masters, editor of the Gardeners’ Chronicle. 
Upon October 7th that gentleman wrote to the 
Messrs. Biiss as follows: 
“ Last year you were good enough to send us 
for trial some of your new kinds of potatoes. 
As a large trial of over 300 sorts was projected 
to be carried out at the Royal Horticultural 
Society’s garden at Chiswick this season, I 
thought the fairest way would be to send your 
samples to be tried with the rest. I sent them 
under numbers, so that no one but myself 
knew either the name's of the varieties or the 
senders. I have now the pleasure of telling 
you that a first-class certificate was awarded by 
the judges to your Extra, Early Vermont and 
to Vermont Beauty. No doubt you will obtain 
official notice of this ere long; meanwhile, I 
thought you would like to know how much 
appreciated your potatoes were.” 
This certainly is a fair test, and should put a 
stop to the depreciation of American varieties 
in the lump. We may add that the “ Vermont 
Beauty ” has not yet been put in the market; we 
understand it is to bear the name of “ Brown¬ 
ell’s Beauty.” It is a potato of excellent 
quality, and the handsomest one we ever saw. 
Two Crops at Once. 
BT VETEIl HBNDEBSON. 
There is always some new idea coming up in 
the cultivation of the soil, originating frequently 
by accident, and quite often by those who have 
not made the work of the farm or garden the 
study of their lives. A case of this kind came 
under my observation last w r eelc, wherein a 
gentleman living in the upper part of New 
York Island, and cultivating but a small garden 
patch behind his house, discovered that to util¬ 
ize his small space he could sow his “Little 
Gem ” peas, and carrots, beets, or parsnips at 
the same time—in fact, in the same row, two 
feet apart. The peas, of course, came up boldly, 
seemingly leaving the more tardy root seeds 
so far behind that they would be no more 
seen. Not so, however, for soon as the peas 
were matured for use, clustering among the 
stems came the feeble seedlings of this second 
crop. The “ straw ” of the pea crop was care¬ 
fully removed on a cloudy day, so as not 
to have the sun burn up the then unshaded 
seedlings of the root crop. A few days’ expo¬ 
sure to sun and air, and they were thinned out to 
the usual distance of three or four inches, and 
by fall the crops of carrots, beets, or parsnips 
were just as good as if they had had the space 
entirely to themselves, or that the first crop of 
peas had not been taken. Market gardeners, 
who usually occupy valuable land, are obliged 
to resort to every possible expedient to keep 
the land earning something all the time, and 
they make it produce two and often three 
crops in a year. 
- ———ti ■»- 
Native Races of Sheep. 
As a general rule, the sheep that we have 
imported hither from England have not been 
found to thrive. The purc-bred races of Leices¬ 
ter, Lincoln, Cotswold, and South-Down which 
have been imported have, with few exceptions, 
deteriorated. The greatest number of excep¬ 
tions have occurred with the South-Downs, and 
the Leicesters have been, we believe, in every 
case complete failures. The English method 
of close breeding and high feeding is perhaps 
somewhat to blame for these unsatisfactory re¬ 
sults, but the difference between the climates of 
that country and this is one very sufficient 
cause, and another is the difference between 
the two methods of feeding. The first diffi¬ 
culty, that of climate, is insuperable. The 
second, that of feeding, is also so in a great 
measure, because that depends upon the crops we 
raise for feed, and our crops are a necessity of 
our climate. But no country in the world has bet¬ 
ter opportunities of raising in a few years such 
varieties of sheep as are suitable to our climate 
from the material at hand in the most suitable 
