OF INJURIOUS INSECTS. 
9 
first week of November. Tlie safety of the roots appears to have been 
partly attributable to the enormous quantity of “ black grass,” Alope- 
curus agrestis, which, being unconquerable from the wet weather, to a 
certain extent attracted the Wireworm from the roots. After the 
Agriotes lineatus. 
Mangolds were pulled Peewits and Rooks were busy on the field for a 
week, probably doing good service in clearing larv®. At Knebworth, 
Herts, Mr. Benjamin Brown mentions the larvae of Agriotes obscurns as 
doing much damage on some liglit-land farms to the young Barley 
after fallow, and where the land was in bad condition; but where the 
Barley succeeded a good crop of roots, fed on the land by sheep, or 
where there was plenty of manure in the soil, the plants grew too 
vigorously to receive much injury. On heavy clay land the soil was 
so close that the Wireworm could hardly exist. Mr. Silvester, writing 
from the neighbourhood of St. Albans, also notices that Wireworm has 
not been as destructive as usual in the fields. Mr. Matlieson mentions 
that at Addington, Bucks, Potatoes that were planted on ground 
trenched, and the turf buried during the severe weather of last winter, 
have suffered very much. He notes the Wireworm being, as a matter 
of course, troublesome on newly broken-up ground, and that in 
breaking up pasture land, breast ploughing, and burning the turf, 
would be a good measure for destruction of the insects. At Tangley, 
Guildford, Mr. Newton Smith notes that a piece of Wheat was being 
ravaged in May by larvae of Agriotes obsciir'iis, but being on very loamy 
soil and exposed to excessive rain the frequent application of Crossbill’s 
roller saved it (? by preventing the passage of the Wireworms from 
plant to plant). Mr. Hart records no damage of any importance 
being done this year by Wireworm in the neighbourhood of Ashford, 
Kent. At Tranmere, near Birkenhead, the Wireworm was moderately 
plentiful, but not very injurious; and at Huddersfield, Yorkshire, 
Mr. Mosley mentions a field dressed with excessively stimulating 
c 
