DADDY LONGLEGS. 
21 
[This observation quite agrees with the result of the experiments 
of Mr. Ralph Lowe (noted p. 26 of Report for 1884), in which grubs 
covered respectively with quicklime, soot, household salt, and super¬ 
phosphate, and also some placed in earth mixed with one-fourth of 
white arsenic, were not at all the worse, excepting those that had been 
in the arsenic, and even these recovered before the following day. 
But nitrate of soda had much more serviceable effects. —Ed.] 
Mr. Osborne continued :—“ Prevention in my opinion lies in the 
cultivation long prior to the sowing of the seed, and the only chance 
is to destroy the egg by constant stirring of the land during winter 
and up to sowing-time, paring the lea lightly now [communication 
sent in autumn, Ed.] , pulverising with heavy harrows at different 
intervals up to the final ploughing for the seed-bed, which should be 
as late as possible. Chemicals might and could during this operation 
be used successfully both in the destruction of the egg and the 
encouraging forward of the crop. Hot lime, gas-lime, soot, salt, and 
nitrate of soda incorporated into the soil, all help to pulverise and 
make it near to potato or turnip land, where I have never known them 
work.” [Unfortunately this absence cannot be looked for as a rule, 
Ed.] “If a man is not able to overtake this extra work, his only 
chance in lea remains in small furrows, and the use of three-horse 
harrows deep and sharply-pointed, to bring the land into a friable 
state. 
“ The grub does not do all the harm when lea is ploughed in the 
usual way, and the furrows left unbroken. The cold easterly winds 
which we had this spring gets easily at the tender plant when it is 
openly ploughed and badly harrowed. This is my experience so far 
as cultivation is concerned. 
“ There is another fact I wish to bring under your notice. Our 
predecessors were not much given to house-feeding, but allowed their 
cattle to range over the fields in winter, and left no such cover of grass 
in autumn to protect the eggs as we now do. To illustrate this fact, I 
had forty acres of lea out this year (twenty of which had been out 
seven years); I expected to get the usual eating up, but I took the 
precaution of allowing all the cattle I could get on it during the 
winter. A favourable opportunity for this offered in short shipments 
of cattle from the port. Owing to the strictures of sending by Derry, 
the only port in the North free from foot-and-mouth disease, the shippers 
were obliged to send them to me to wait for the following boat; con¬ 
sequently I had hundreds upon the land, night after night, during the 
winter : the result was I had never such a crop of lea out. That proves 
that the tramping and close grazing destroys the eggs. It is also 
noticeable the headland never suffers to the same extent, from the fact 
that it is closer grazed and more trodden in shelter of the fences. When 
